If you are a Rogers Android customer in Canada with an HTC Magic, HTC Dream, LG Eve, check out the new blog all about Rogers, HTC, and the Android 1.6 Fiasco! Visit us at I Want My One Point Six - Demanding Android 1.6 for our Rogers HTC Magic & Dream, and LG Eve Phones You can also follow us on Twitter at Michael Schmidt (IWMOPS) on Twitter
While I support your efforts, I just think it's a damn shame that it always has to come to something like this when dealing with Rogers. I don't know what it is about them, but it's almost like they go out of their way to upset Canadians. Maybe it's a long standing internal joke between Rogers VP's. Luckily their actions do not represent the vast majority of Canadian businesses.... or else I'd move! LOL
Okay, lets be fair. Although I feel cheated because Rogers misled me (based upon specific questions I asked during my purchase in June 2009), I feel there is a huge amount of blame that should be directed to both HTC, and the Android team. To repeat what I wrote in another thread, the fault lies with: Android team: Because they didn't establish rules about who and how manufacturers could build Android phones! They helped create a market of different hardware that is incompatible with various OS versions, different user experiences some relatively good (HTC Hero), some not so good (HTC Magic/Dream), and the inability to universally allow OTA (or desktop based) OS updates because of the hardware differences. They must assert more control over hardware manufacturers, in regards, to agreements that hardware specifications and drivers are *open*, backwards compatible, and available in a timely fashion. Currently the Android team are completely dependent on HTC to write drivers that will allow the Dream / Magic / G1 to work with OS 2.1. This is NOT GOOD! Why should HTC spend money resources on older hardware when they would rather sell their latest hardware? If HTC's specifications and drivers were open, the community could take care of their own upgrades. That, in essence, was the original point of Android! Until this happen Android will continue to encounter problems with OS updates. The manufacturer The fault also lies, in a minor way, with the manufacturer because they don't really care about the Android community. Their responsibility is to profit and their shareholders. In other words, their isn't a whole lot of incentive to continue to support a phone past its six month life cycle. And why should they release their proprietary source code and/or hardware specifications to the community? Under pressure from the carriers (who, in turn, are being pressured by us), they may actually build drivers for OS 2.1 but I am willing to bet that this will be the last update (until the Android team remedy there business model). The carrier Is also not very keen on supporting older phones. They want their customers to continue renewing their contracts with new phones every two years (at least in Canada). If they can help it, they also want their phones customized in a manner to make it as difficult as possible to switch carriers. These are some of the reasons why the iPhone is so successful, the homogeneous and closed design have huge advantages over the Android. A consistent user experience, apps work (for the most part) across models, one desktop app for all models, peripherals are the same for all, OTA (or through the desktop) OS updates, and developing for iPhone/iPod is much easier.
