Telework USA

Clip of the Day: Bob Marley

Folks using Android phones and tablets for personal, business and – in most cases, both – should keep up with the fast evolution of the devices. Today, I’ll take a brief look at a challenge called “fragmentation.” In the next post, I’ll review what seems to be a significant upgrade in Android security.

Android technically refers to the operating system, which is the software layer in any computer equipment that harnesses the raw computing power of the device and lets it perform tasks that programmers tell it to.

The Android OS is a bit different in that it is “open source,” which means it is comprised of elements that are not owned by one entity. In that way, it is fundamentally different than Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows (and its offshoots).

That lack of ownership has some profound ramifications. For one thing, that’s why Android is used by so many vendors. Nobody needs to get permission from – and pay a royalty to – anyone to use the OS. Indeed, it is freely available on the Internet. You can go and download it right now. (But please finish reading this post first…)

An inherent danger of open source is an issue called “fragmentation.” Since nobody “owns” an open source OS, vendors using it can tweak it in any way they care to. Indeed, that’s what they want to do, since a tweak here and a tweak there can make it more attractive and increase sales.

But fragmentation leads to differentiation that is so great that the OSes no longer interoperate. In essence, too much tweaking creates different OSes. Imagine that screws are open source and you go to Home Depot to buy some. The ones of the shelf look like they will fit the nuts you have down in the basement. But when you get home they don’t quite fit. That’s essentially the danger with fragmentation.

There are mixed views on how serious the problem is. Earlier this month, a firm named Localytics released research suggesting it is not as bad as many folks thinks. The firm said that 73 percent of Android users employ the Gingerbread version of the OS. That suggests that the problem is overblown. Not everyone is buying it, though.

Folks buying Android devices should be aware of this issue, though there isn’t much to do about it. If you like a phone, buy it. The topic I’ll look at next – security – is something that perhaps is of more immediate importance to folks who own Android phones and, in particularly, download apps from Google Market.