14 DAY TRIAL // Good news comes to the owners of a Nexus S 4G smartphone on Sprint’s network, straight from the Android Building group, namely that their device is now fully supported in AOSP (Android Open Source Project).
In a post on that group, Jean-Baptiste Queru, technical lead, Android Open Source Project, Google, announced the new status of the device, confirming the move officially.
He also noted that the full support for Nexus S 4G in AOSP would allow Google to properly distribute CDMA and WiMAX binaries for it.
“We've been able to resolve the issues around Nexus S 4G, and we can now properly distribute its CDMA and WiMAX binaries. That allows Nexus S 4G to work with AOSP just as well as Nexus S,” he noted.
“As a result, we now consider Nexus S 4G to be fully supported in AOSP, with no restrictions. Overall, Nexus S is the preferred platform for AOSP work.”
Additionally, he announced that the set of IMM76L binaries for Nexus S 4G have been upgraded to include WiMAX support.
Responding to an inquiry on the status of Galaxy Nexus on Verizon’s network, Jean-Baptiste Queru noted that things are a bit more complicated here, and that they might never come to completion.
He noted that Google has to check first whether they have the rights to distribute all the necessary files for CDMA/LTE.
Additionally, even if the software for Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus is brought in line with the build for the international version, the camera, GPS and NFC won’t work.
“It's hard to justify putting much effort into it if I know that the result won't be good enough to be usable as a daily phone,” he concluded.
He did not say that Verizon’s flavor of the phone wouldn’t be supported in AOSP, but he did not confirm that this would happen, either.