14 DAY TRIAL // In response to a series of allegations regarding Google's “open” approach towards Android, Google's Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering, has published a blog post on the Android Developers website, stating that things are actually a little different.
According to him, Google continues to move towards supporting the development of an open platform for the mobile industry and beyond, just as the company announced about three years ago.
However, much has changed since then, and Android is no longer available on shelves only on mobile phones, but also on larger devices, such as tablet PCs, which offer new, highly appealing features and capabilities to all users.
More and more manufacturers chose Android for their devices, and load it on new form factors, and Google is committed to offering makers and developers the possibility to add their personal touch to the platform.
“As always, device makers are free to modify Android to customize any range of features for Android devices,” Andy Rubin states.
This approach would offer manufacturers the possibility to add unique features to their devices, though some basic compatibility requirements were still put in place, for them, in an attempt to prevent the fragmentation of the platform.
“Our approach remains unchanged: there are no lock-downs or restrictions against customizing UIs. There are not, and never have been, any efforts to standardize the platform on any single chipset architecture,” Rubin notes.
He also stated that the platform remains open source, and that the company would release the source code for the latest releases of the OS as soon as it is ready. Previous rumors suggested that Google would be moving away from the open source approach for Android.
“As soon as this work is completed, we’ll publish the code. This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy. We remain firmly committed to providing Android as an open source platform across many device types,” he continues.
Another important point he touched was related to Android 3.0 Honeycomb and smartphones running under other flavors of the platform.
Google remains committed to offering Honeycomb features to handsets, though it remains to be seen how exactly would the company plan on doing so. Some suggested that the next flavor of Android, Ice Cream, would bring smartphones and tablets under the same umbrella.
“As I write this the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones,” Andy Rubin explained.