Talk:Android (smartphone)

Interoperability and standards

There's a lot of discussion of features, which are important for the end user in the marketplace. So far, however, I don't see a significant discussion of how the Open Handset Alliance will ensure interoperability. Have they set up an interoperability testing laboratory, which could even be a distributed virtual private network.

That usually comes from a combination of standards, options selected in the standard, and agreement on things that don't lend themselves to standardization, such as the operating system. Apropos of standards, I do know that the W3C Consortium is working on standards for mobile devices. Has the Android taken a position on using, or not using them?

What does Android assume about the IP stack? Is it, as a number of newer mobile phones, dependent on IPv6? What's the multimedia architecture? Does it, for example, use the Session Initiation Protocol? MIME types?

Any speculation on bandwidth required to run these features, which clearly will affect infrastructure, and even where the Androids could be used?

Howard C. Berkowitz 12:14, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

I had a brief chat with a guy at Google who works on Android recently while at a conference. I know that the browser on there is going to use the WebKit engine, and there is some interoperability built-in by having a standard library, a standard VM and a compiler for that VM that takes code written in the Java programming language and compiles it for the device. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but if you want to know, there is a mailing list where you can ask these questions. Perhaps we should invite Google and the Open Handset Alliance to become topic informants, both to improve the article and so we can nerd out about mobile stuff. --Tom Morris 17:56, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

To be honest, Tom, I am less concerned with the specific details than knowing that interoperability has been considered early in the process, and serious attempts to ensure it among devices. I spent six years doing protocol conformance testing, and the reality was that it still didn't tell us what we found in multilateral interoperability tests, and also some very careful work in defining interoperable options. As you probably know, for an Internet Engineering Task Force to move beyond "proposed standard", there must be demonstrated interoperability between at least two independent implementations. To move from "draft" to "full" standard, there must be more than two implementations that interoperate, and a formal implementation "lessons learned" document. I'm not always sure that industry alliances are as stringent — happily, some are. Howard C. Berkowitz 19:41, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

disambig

At some point there is gonna have to be a disambig page for Android (and some possible renaming of articles), because there will surely be an article someday about the science-fiction androids that are human-like replicas (not robots!). Should you start thinking about this now, while your article is still evolving? Hayford Peirce 12:53, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

Are you sure this article isn't being written by a science-fiction android? Turing-capable and all that? :-)

"I'm afraid, Dave...." Hayford Peirce 13:39, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

Yes, disambiguation will be needed. Howard C. Berkowitz 12:57, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

+1. I think "Android (platform)" would probably do. --Tom Morris 17:52, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

Cleanup

Currently, the "Android v. iPhone" section reads very much like an advocacy piece, rather than a description of the technical differences between the platforms. And why, exactly, the iPhone and not any other platform? Similarly, we should probably not have "Java-based", as that can lead to confusion that the Android platform is part of the Java platform, when in fact it is it's own platform, with it's own VM and compiler that you can write for in a language with a syntax that matches that of the Java programming language. This needs to be made clear. "The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications." sounds like marketing puff, which we should probably steer away from. Also, we need to probably add some of the views that have been expressed by developers who have built applications for the Android emulator. --Tom Morris 18:38, 10 August 2008 (CDT)

Update and overhaul

I am working on improving and updating this article, as much of it is written from perspective of when android was an "upcoming" technology. I wouldn't call it upcoming anymore. Posting this to get the attention of anyone else who may be interested. Eric Clevinger 20:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)