Gadgetory

hey guys so Ice Cream Sandwich jelly bean and omu eyes why do we have them and why are they good for us that's what we're gonna talk about in today's episode of the Android guy weekly so in UI or a user interface is basically the design the environment in which you do stuff on your phone or tablet now it looks a little bit different from tablet to tablet there are different themes and there are different launchers and apps and whatnot it's really kind of confusing but just know that it all just works so why do we have these different things well let's do some history first Ice Cream Sandwich came along to really speed things up it was an overhaul of the entire underpinnings of the device now this was really really important and it helped bring Android essentially from honeycomb which was like we said earlier a necessary evil up into a modern smoother OS something that could be used on higher-end hardware and really helped propel Android past where it was and into where it will be Ice Cream Sandwich was the refinement of that was really a good thing let's go all the way back to cupcake I know I love these names just as much as you do and there's kind of some sarcasm there and kind of not cupcake I think that was version 1.5 it was the initial Android that came out on the g1 long long long ago it didn't look all that pretty it did what it needed to do but it didn't look good while it was doing it was kind of a drawback instead what it had was something that no other OS had it was open it had the power of the open source development movement behind it it was able to be customized that's where things get different but we'll come back to that let's talk about Ice Cream Sandwich and jelly bean we talked a little bit about why ice sandwiches and what it does what it's doing how it's really really a good thing for us to have jellybeans is the next version some people we don't even know for sure that it's gonna be called jellybeans that's just what everybody kind of guesses because J comes after I and Ice Cream Sandwich starts with I and what other dessert would start with a J if you know let us know in the comments over at pocketnow.com but jellybeans we also suspect is going to be android version 5.0 some of us though aren't so sure yours truly I think it may be Android version 4.1 maybe 4.2 why is that we've heard some rumors that jellybean which is what we're gonna call it for this video isn't really that much of an improvement per se over Ice Cream Sandwich it's an incremental improvement rather than a huge leap it's probably going to look a little bit different but there's probably gonna be a lot more stuff happening behind the scenes some more api's may be open to us there may be some more support for newer processors graphics processors and whatnot and overall tweaks everything that they've learned up to this point they're going to include in jellybean now again probably gonna look a little bit different but not too much and that gets us to really the meat of what we're talking about why do we have all of these different things to make Android look different so why do we need all of these different flavors if you will and if you'll pardon the pun well a lot of times you you need to advance because you don't want to have the same experience and a new back-end because users don't know that they want to see something new they want to experience something new they don't have to but they want to and that helps sell devices which gets us over to OEM customization people like Motorola and Samsung and probably some others out there have customized Android so you're not using the stock Android experience you've got a new launcher you've got new apps that replace the core Android launcher and core Android apps now do you have to do that as an OEM well no you don't have to it just helps differentiate your product from somebody else's so with that we're gonna shift gears just a little bit we're gonna talk about iOS and the iPhone okay all of these devices essentially have the same oh s there are some differences depending on platform and you may not have upgraded and might be stuck on an older version but let's just say you're running the same OS with the same look and feel the same interface everything is the same its uniqueness through similarity we won't get off on that tangent but it's the same it's consistent and people argue that that's a good thing in addition and I'm not going to disagree with that argument right now in addition you have very very few platforms that you're running on that means the device itself the footprint the height the width the depth it's all essentially the same now of course as you're iterating up through the various different devices you know the iPhone 3 doesn't look the same as the iPhone 4 but the iPhone 4 is the iPhone 4 it's the same across that makes things really really really convenient for accessory manufacturers because now they can target the iPhone as a platform and only have to make one set of accessories for every generation of the phone and not even that anymore Android on the other hand it's different it's not the same it's not uniform it's not consistent that is what a lot of people say is its biggest drawback well I'm gonna argue the other side of that and say that's its biggest strength you see people are different I don't want the same things you want and based on some of the comments that we've received in the past you don't want a lot of the things that I want and that's okay you see with Android not only can you pick your carrier but you can pick your device you can pick your specifications as essentially you can pick your version of Android you can pick what type of interface you want on it and after the fact if you don't like no motoblur if you don't like sense if you don't like TouchWiz UI guess what you can throw a third-party launcher onto your device and essentially you've got a device that looks exactly like you want it because you are the person that makes that decision but things are different that means OMS can sell different products it's not all the same thing there are lots of competitors in the market that's one of the reasons why Google is pushing out so many updates to the Android OS all these different people are throwing in new stuff a new processor dual core quad core dodeca core you see manufacturers are coming out with all kinds of different variations why because people like you and I want them some people might want a 720p HD screen some people may want a screen that's more visible in bright light then it looks good inside with no light some people might want a keyboard on the device some people might want that keyboard to slide out some people might not like the Sense UI some people might not like motoblur you see because of android and it's open nature people OMS and carriers can make different devices that fit different types of people and then different types of people come in and adopt Android why because it's not all the same it does what they want it to do it looks like they want it to do so why do we have all of these different options why is there so much differentiation because we're all different Android is really the only operating system that allows for that pure freedom and flexibility to adapt to all of those differences between us out there now Windows Mobile that's kind of the halfway point I said Windows Mobile but I really mean Windows Phone it's a hard habit to break guys it's halfway you see OMS can pick it up and install it on their devices and their devices can be differentiated but they can't customize it as much as Android so we might see Windows Phone really take off and accelerate because it's got kind of the halfway between Android which is anything you want and everything you want an iPhone which is only what they say a Windows Phone is somewhere in the middle I don't know if they realize the strength that they have in that position just yet we'll have to wait and see in the meantime I'm gonna stick with Android if you want to choose a different OS that's fine because you and I are different if you liked this video go ahead and give it a big thumbs up if you want to comment on it please head over to the new version of pocketnow.com put your comments over there we're gonna try and drive commenting on the article itself I will have a link if you're watching this on our YouTube channel to the article down below so just scroll down there and click on the link I'll make it super easy for you for PocketNow and the android guy weekly I'm Joe Levi