As I sat back cheering what seems to be the changing of the guard I could not help to think about 7 years ago when this same forum and others like it were swept up in the excitement around this new OS. This OS (android), though suffering some growing pains, had so much potential and despite the challenges out there from Palm OS to Windows it remain the winner. And most of that had to do with the excitement surrounding the OS and the love from the community. Even when WebOS made headway it found itself also swept up by the excitement of Android (their hot tablet really caught fire when it ran android).
So here we are with Andy Rubin about to do it again and I can not help to ask are we ready to go back?
Let's not act like there were no other devices in said category that opened the device to the community to innovate on, especially on the software side. One Plus I would say, especially at its price point, is that device. Yet despite it making waves it is not eclipsing the Nexus/Pixel.
And why is that?
I think it is simple and it hit me when I started running Lineage OS on my Nexus 5. We do not want to go back to relying on a phone that is only supported by ROMs. Having experienced the bugs in Lineage where I had to reboot my phone to use my camera (on several occasions) I was reminded why I left ROMs in the first place. Because I grew tired of key apps failing at the time I needed it to work.
So here we are a few days from the announcement of the Essential and I am thinking that the house that Andy built is both Android and in the open source variety. But the reality is android has gotten much better since he left. Not saying he did not play a part in building the solid framework on which Android stands now, but though he deserves all the credit for that we can not overlook how far android has evolved now. And I think Andy understands that, but the question has to be how do he plan on having Essential Ph-1 customers get support and swift updates, is it going to be through Google or the community?
If it is through Google and this phone fills the roll of that Google Play edition device then it will succeed. Google Play devices were right on the heels of updates from nexus phones, and in some case getting them before. So if Andy can assure that then he has a potential winner.
But if Andy is going to take the easy way out and allow the development community supply the software then it will be hard to take this device seriously as a daily driver. Then this device go from need to toy, and the problem with toys is that they tend to fall down the buying list.
So what do you think, will Andy actually follow in the steps of making this a Google Play (like) device or a Community Developer device?
