Sony releasing features as apps | Telecom Consumer Discussion Forums

I would say that perhaps the idea of moving a feature to an application has been perhaps a little lost in this post so I’ll explain. Samsung for example uses a hugely skinned version of android which we all know as touchwiz, touchwiz introduces hundreds if not thousands of new features this presents a problem for samsung when it comes to upgrade time.

The current development cycle works like so, Google developers the latest version of Android behind close doors, then on the day of announced release Google pushes it out to public repositories OEMS like HTC, Samsung, Sony etc etc then pull down this branch into their internal repositories and then have to port each feature over (in many cases most just need small code tweaks due to API maturity) however it still requires them to do benchmarking, unit tests, campat fixes etc etc and this can take in many cases if not most months upon months.

This means that an updated version of android pushed out to the masses is incredibly slow in comparison to say a google play device which runs pure android, those usually get the update within a week if not less. After Samsung (again example) have finished porting all there existing features and building new features in and doing a whole heap of testing they then need to pay a quite large fee to carriers (mostly in the USA) to have them approved for release (unlocked phones again dont have this issue and get updates direct from samsung again upto 2-3 months quicker) after carrier testing and eventual approval the update is released to the consumer upto a year later.

Now what Motorola and Sony are aiming to to is cut back on that required porting and update time, in basic terms if an application such as say the camera breaks in a samsung device they have to go through the above steps to release a minor fix – however Motorola whom packages there camera package as an application simply push out an app update – testing is done by motorola and takes about 12 hours to hit the consumer.

IF Samsung and other android OEMs start to shrink down the base install and push out the rest as applications we the consumer benefit from quicker updates and OEMs benefit from less direct code porting as it’s rare that application BC breaks between major versions of android

hope that clears it up why this is a big benefit all around, hats off to sony and motorola for taking the jump, it’s great to see OEMS understanding all the bells dont have to be pre-applied.