For the author revolutionary seems to mean "reaches the most people". My definition is closer to "radically new or innovative".
The iPhone drastically redefined the smartphone market including the competitors that followed it. Hard for me to swallow that its effect on the world has been negligible.
Nope. It doesn't mean "reaches the most people". It means "has the most impact on the world". I think that Android will be the technology that allows people in poorer places of the world to have the internet - and thus, knowledge, and thus, power - in their pocket. That is going to change the world in a significant way.
Even something as simple as this: the internet may have information on the best way to treat sick cattle, or how to best treat certain crops. Heck, in more developed areas, it may cut the reaction time of aid services drastically.
But in the context of what the OP is saying, what does that matter? The point is that an open source Android will be available to many, many more people worldwide than the iPhone ever will. Where their UI inspiration came from isn't really all that relevant.
Really? I guess we can wait and see, or we can already start attributing accolades to Android that have not happened yet. I still see people bringing up Xerox Parc all the time with respect to the GUI, so maybe where UI inspiration comes from is relevant?
> I still see people bringing up Xerox Parc all the time
> with respect to the GUI, so maybe where UI inspiration
> comes from is relevant?
That's a very good point. Some talk as if Jobs ripped off Xerox PARC 1:1 and just reimplemented what he saw. In reality he saw only the concept, and Apple hugely expanded it, implementing lots of stuff what was not there (as "simple" as overlapping windows e.g.). And PARC was compensated for the ideas too.
Time will tell. I think you're wrong. Most of the third world doesn't even have a reliable cell phone service and, of course, little money, so there are few consumers to target ads at.
On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.
Your second paragraph is warm and fuzzy nonsense, you should be ashamed of yourself for writing it.
Smartphones are designed for the needs of the developed world, the less developed world has it's requirements too, I doubt that internet enabled smart phones are high on the list.
And those alleged $80 handsets, how long exactly until they break and require servicing? Google "android failure rate", (less than e.g. iPhones, you can check), compare it those to conventional mobile phones.
> Most of the third world doesn't even have a reliable cell phone service
Wrong. Most of the third world has excellent cell phone service and they're using cell phones for far more stuff than we do. In Kenya, for instance, you can make small payments using your regular, non-smart cell phone.
> of course, little money, so there are few consumers to target ads at
They have advertising in the third world as well. I doubt that's because there's no money going around.
> On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.
This needs to be solved, agreed. Chances are, however, that the phones that solve this problem will run some form of Android.
> > On a practical note, battery life matters in impoverished regions, best of luck with your "might last 24 hours, 36 if you're really lucky" Android handset.
> This needs to be solved, agreed. Chances are, however, that the phones that solve this problem will run some form of Android.
It is worth noting that some Android phones are already doing impressive things on this front. See, for example, the Samsung Replenish (that can slowly charge from sunlight with an alternative battery cover):
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/10/samsung-replenish-review/
I don't think it's as bad as you make it seem, but not by much: internet access is definitely nonsense in countries where mere electricity availability is spotty to start with (which is a common issue in sub-saharan Africa, communal charging for cell phones is common), it requires both electricity and a much higher density of cells than basic GSM voice and text; and battery life on current smartphones makes them a very hard sell in such countries (see: spotty electricity availability).
However I do think smartphones are a logical and valuable extension of cell phones in developing countries, not in that they improve communication but in that they make "offline" information more readily available, things like medical knowledge applications are not really possible on a "dumbphone" (limited screen real estate and controls) but a smartphone can replace stacks of books, can be carried and can be kept "current" by updating its applications a few times a year.
I see value in that, lots of it.
Oh, and $80 handsets are not even close to fixing this, the majority of sub-saharan africa (in terms of population) lives below the UN's poverty threshold. Which is under $2/day.
I see these $80 handsets going to the "upper crust" of these societies more than to the poorest segments.
Most of the third world measured by area or population? The areas that is densely populated often have pretty decent connectivity. It is also improving very fast as operators are investing heavily to continue to meet the increasing usage.
Android is a linux clone which itself is a unix clone. It features an iphone clone ui layer and a java clone application framework. There's was a lot of great execution in Android but very little that was revolutionary.
If Microsoft buys Android instead of Google and keeps it proprietary the third world still gets cheap linux-based smartphones.
If Apple doesn't release the iPhone real webkit browsers still make it into phones based on linux (and Opera Mobile's compressed web is probably superior for many third world data rates anyway). Maybe it takes a bit longer for touch ui to popularize but that's not indispensable to accessing the web knowledge base.
This is a pointless argument about how much credit iPhone deserves for what Android / WebOS / Windows Phone did later. People give varying degrees of credit for different reasons and that's fine.
What's not really cool is MG Siegler criticizing Android's open-ness by means of some weird roundabout mockery of a non-event. He's so extremely smug in his post criticizing Android about something that iOS is orders of magnitude worse at any way you slice it. If you like iOS you should be glad there is viable competition to keep Apple honest because competition is good for everyone. Without competition to Apple the future is a world where you do what Apple says you can do, and you pay out the ass for it. I love Apple stuff, but even I'm not fool enough to believe they have my best interests at heart now and forever more.
The iPhone drastically redefined the smartphone market including the competitors that followed it. Hard for me to swallow that its effect on the world has been negligible.