Well, after the announcement from Google that the Navigation app would be available to all Android devices with Android 1.6 and above, people with Android 1.5 are feeling a little more sad. At first it was the updated market, a little speed boost and the updated search box that the Android 1.5 users were pining for. But now, they are lost on the street without Google Navigation as well. I exaggerate, but not by much. Android 1.5 was released in April of 2009, just about 9 short months ago. Android 1.6 came out just 3 months ago, and Android 2.0 was released earlier this month with the Droid and then bits are showing up in the open source project. That’s a very fast release cycle. It’s got some hardware/firmware developers just trying to play catch up with their custom UI offerings. Let’s dive into the wacky world of custom UIs for Android and see just what that means to the users. First, let’s look at those lucky few (around 19% of Android phones) who are still running Android 1.5? Well, in the US at least, these following phones are currently running Android 1.5:
- Sprint HTC Hero
- Sprint Samsung Moment
- T-Mobile Motorola Cliq
- T-Mobile Samsung Behold II
- Verizon HTC Droid Eris
With the exception of the Moment, all these devices are running some form of customized Android. The Hero, and Droid Eris are sporting Sense UI, the Cliq has Motorola’s MOTOBLUR and finally Behold II is running a TouchWiz style interface. It’s understandable, but not necessarily enjoyable, why these devices are still on Android 1.5. I’m sure it takes developers a while to customize the Android platform with their added software and while the additional UI is nice for some (Sense UI and MOTOBLUR add value IMO) for the Behold II and it’s TouchWiz interface, I don’t see any benefit.
But, are those benefits now going away? I’ve used the stock Android for a couple months and I’ve used a Sense UI powered Hero for a while and I can definitely say that the Sense UI does add to the experience over the stock Android. However, would I be willing to trade Sense UI for the updated market, Google navigation, and overall speed increase? I’d probably be willing to do so. Of course, it’d be best to have Android 2.0 with Sense UI and word is, 2.0 is coming. But when? Would it have been a better move for HTC to post up an Android 1.6 powered Sense UI as an interim, or is the idea of skipping 1.6 and going straight to 2.0 the better move? Or is the whole idea of running a custom Android UI starting to sound like a bad option?
Let’s face it, the stock Android UI is pretty solid all on it’s own. And additional functionality can be introduced through widgets, or other apps by the end user themself. Running stock, it would allow the developers to more easily update their Android build and push it out to users, as is the case with the G1 and myTouch 3G, both of which have been running Android 1.6 for a while now. The idea of the custom UI is definitely understandable. The manufacturers want something that makes their devices stand out from the rest. If all the Android phones were running a stock UI, then it would pretty much come down to hardware and network.
Hardware
Well, ok, so let’s look at the phones in the US market to date. We have four QWERTY sliders; the G1, Moment, Cliq and Droid. Each is different enough in other aspects I would not call them similar. The Moment sports an AMOLED screen, the Droid that nice 3.7″ Hi-res screen, and the Cliq has expanded ROM and a 5MP camera which set it and the G1 apart. The only one of these phones not running stock Android is the Cliq too, so it can be seen that the manufacturers don’t need to be worried about customized ROMs for these phones. Now let’s look at the none physical keyboard phones, of which we also have four; the myTouch 3G, Sprint Hero, Droid Eris, and Behold II. Now, with these, only one is running a stock Android OS, myTouch 3G. The Hero and Droid Eris are actually sporting the same Sense UI on top of Android 1.5 and the Behold II has the TouchWiz. The Behold II has the AMOLED screen and a nice 5MP camera as well as a 3.5mm headphone port, setting it apart from the myTouch 3G. The funny thing is, the two that are the most similar in hardware, Hero and Droid Eris, have the exact same firmware too. This, to me, almost negates the argument of using the custom UI to try and differentiate your phone from others. Granted, they are the same manufacturer, HTC, but I still stick with my opinion about negating the custom UI. That leads us into the next section – network.
Network
The last part of the puzzle for Android handset manufacturers is which network to use/support. HTC has devices on all three major US cell providers who have Android phones, just to cover their bases and Samsung and Motorola have a phone on two of the three, not the same two, but two each. Let’s look at each network’s offerings.
T-Mobile seems to be the leader of options with four phones at this time; G1, myTouch 3G; Cliq and Behold II. Two of those phones are HTC, one is Motorola and the other Samsung. I haven’t seen, but would be interested to learn the sales numbers for their Android phones after all four phones were available. As of a last month, the G1 and myTouch 3G dominated the Android user base, mainly because of earlier availability. I’m wondering how many people though are purchasing the Cliq or Behold II over the G1 and myTouch 3G because of the custom UI.
Sprint and Verizon have two phones each, one from HTC with Sense UI (Hero and Droid Eris), and one from Samsung with a stock Android (Moment – Sprint) or one from Motorola with stock Android (Droid – Verizon). The reason I’m not sure trying to compare sales between the two phones based on the firmware/custom UI would be right is that for both carriers, one phone has a keyboard and the other does not, which is too much of a hardware difference. That being said, I’d like to point out that the Droid, which does have Android 2.0, is a big seller so far and accounts for almost 25% of the Android devices surfing the web.
Conclusion
That brings me back to the beginning. Does the Custom UI offered by manufacturers help or hinder Android? If all phones were running Android 1.6+, would there be better Android App Market numbers? Would there be happier users who all get to benefit from Google Navigation? Would users be willing to give up some of the built in functionality of the custom UI for the latest and greatest Android OS? Time will tell, but my prediction is, manufacturers will slowly move away from custom ROMs. Instead they will start to offer custom widgets and apps, for their devices only, on top of the stock Android OS.
