The Power of Open Source for Android

There have been many arguments saying the downfall of Android will be the fragmentation of the operating system. Android has recently been picking up steam with new phones being announced every week. The problem with the Android operating system is that there are so many different devices and carriers that there are too many versions of the Android operating system out in the wild. Is this going to hurt Android?

The argument that fragmentation will hurt Android is that it will be hard for developers to keep up and have apps that work on all different phones with different operating systems. But when we think about it, how many versions are there of Windows right now for computers? XP is still widely used, with Windows Vista out and also now Windows 7. My argument being that operating system fragmentation is nothing new, and has existed long before Android ever came out.

In reality, the operating system being open is what separates Android from any other cell phone on the market today. With an open source operating system this allows not just Google to work on perfecting the software, pretty much anyone can mod and edit Android for the better. In the Linux world different versions are known as different flavors of Linux. With android there are different roms being created and edited by the community. When a new version of Android is released it is then passed onto the carriers/manufactures who then have to take the Android code and optimize it themselves to work on their individual phones, which can be kind of slow. In the digital age people are used to instant fixes to bugs and easy communication which is hard for big companies as Motorola or Verizon or HTC to provide. Communities are popping up on forums such as alldroid who are taking over development and creating faster custom versions of Android creating even more fragmentation of the Android Operating system. The fragmentation being created is a good fragmentation that gives users choice. For instance when installing the sholes team rom on my Motorola Droid I can pick which features or programs i want to use on my device in essence allowing me to customize everything on my phone. Suing a rom we are pretty much able to create our own customized Android Operating System for ourselves. I believe roms are the future of Android although I believe we got to think of a better name for them (I like Flavors in Linux) but imagine easily rolling your own operating system when you first get your new phone. Right now the roms are getting more and more stable and faster ever week, and the developers will work directly with the community to fix bugs in less then a days time.

I believe roms will really take off when someone creates a one click solution to rooting and flashing an image onto your Android Device. Preferably someone would create a desktop program which you pick all the options for your Android version you want and then with one click instantly roots and flashes it to you device. Once this becomes easy for the every day user to install a rom, with out following 60 step directions Android will take off.