{"id":3950,"date":"2011-11-17T08:56:40","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T13:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3950"},"modified":"2014-03-11T19:50:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T23:50:37","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-samsung-busts-a-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3950","title":{"rendered":"The Smartphone Wars: Samsung Busts a Move?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, now, this is interesting.  Cyanogen hints via Twitter that we <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/cyanogen\/status\/136313427248431104\">may get a 4.0 Cyanogen ROM in two months<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-30685_3-57326616-264\/want-android-4.0-wait-2-months-says-cyanogen\/\">news coverage<\/a> I&#8217;ve seen so far misses what I think is the most important bit of context &#8211; that Cyanogen&#8217;s eponymous founder and lead developer got hired by Samsung a few months back.  Samsung is subsidizing this move.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There are obvious reasons for Samsung to have hired Cyanogen that don&#8217;t have anything to do with this tweet&#8230;heck, if I were running an Android port team he&#8217;d certainly be at the top of <em>my<\/em> list.<\/p>\n<p>But I wonder.  Is this, maybe, in part Samsung turning up the heat on its competition?  Or preparing to?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s been a lot of <a href=\"http:\/\/theunderstatement.com\/post\/11982112928\/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support\">disgruntled talk<\/a> about laggy and skipped upgrades for Android phones.  Up to now I think this has mostly been a non-issue, because the app developers&#8217; API compatibility target was really 2.2 or later and upgrades since then have mattered very little in other than cosmetic ways.<\/p>\n<p>But with 4.0 issuing this could change. So&#8230;watch Samsung&#8217;s tempo on over-the-air upgrades, and watch to see if the Cyanogen project executes on making installation of its ROM on EOLed Samsung hardware substantially easier, perhaps with some sort of look-ma-no-hands PC-based universal installer.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I&#8217;m just speculating.  But Cyanogen with Samsung&#8217;s backing is a different and more formidable creature than Cyanogen as some guys in garages. What, if anything, does Samsung hope to gain from that alliance?  An underexamined question; perhaps the 4.0 cycle will bring us some answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, now, this is interesting. Cyanogen hints via Twitter that we may get a 4.0 Cyanogen ROM in two months. The news coverage I&#8217;ve seen so far misses what I think is the most important bit of context &#8211; that Cyanogen&#8217;s eponymous founder and lead developer got hired by Samsung a few months back. Samsung&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=3950\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Smartphone Wars: Samsung Busts a Move?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-3950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3950"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5439,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3950\/revisions\/5439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}