IPFS News Link • Communications
Dear Google: AT&T Locked Down the Best Android Handset Ever, and It’s Your Fault
• http://www.wired.com, By Ryan SingelSince Android is open source software, AT&T and HTC are free to install it on any handset they choose. But like any high-end Android phone, the HTC One X is Google-certified so it can ship with pre-installed Google software, including the Play App Store, Navigator, Gmail and others. It’s not that hard for handset makers and carriers to get that approval — in fact it’s too easy.
The whole promise of Android was that it was an open ecosystem — a contrast Google loves to draw with Apple’s closed system.
At the Google I/O conference in 2010, Google vice president Vic Gundotra intimated that Apple had become the Big Brother it promised to smash.