Editorial: Ice Cream Sandwich slowly but surely making its way to more devices

According to the latest figures released on the Android Developers website, it looks like Ice Cream Sandwich is slowly starting to pop up on more and more devices these days. Of course, with a handful of OEMs that have already released official updates for certain devices and a hardcore development community that has managed to unofficially port the OS to an even larger number of devices, this comes to us as no surprise.

What does come as a bit of an annoyance, more than a shocker, is the fact that ICS is only on a whopping 4.9% of all Android devices out there, while Gingerbread (the OS of 2011) still sits on top of the mountain with a 64.4% piece of the pie. This irritates the living hell out of me because all I can think of when I see these numbers is Google’s claim at the Ice Cream Sandwich launch event that Android 4.0 would theoretically run on any device capable of running Android 2.3.

Now, for those of you that don’t already know, this isn’t entirely Google’s fault. In fact, the OEM’s are more to blame than anybody for holding these updates up. Each company has to put its own twist on Android — ala Sense, MotoBlur and other skinned Android UI’s — which typically is one of the main causes for delayed updates. Then, they also like to play favoritism with the more popular devices and release updates for them before giving any love to the lesser-known ones.

I get it. Each manufacturer needs to have a way of making its device(s) stand out from the crowd. In my opinion, there needs to be more of a focus on hardware specifications rather than theming an operating system that is already beautiful on its own. You want to catch my attention? Make your phone stand out by having the first 15MP camera. How about making truly water-proof devices a standard? Should I even mention quad-core chips? I know how much you all love your power….

My point is this, there are a ton of different ways to be unique. Get the fuck off of AOSP and stop trying to improve it. Google is doing a fine job themselves. Stick to making phones and tablets and leave Android itself be. HTC, Samsung and Motorola — this means you. We love you for your awesome devices, but we hate you for your bloated crappy software. All we want are your devices. Feel free to leave a few at the door on your way out.

#AOSPFTW — Yeah. I said it.

Via: Android Developers