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Numerous Android Choices – Selling Point and Burden

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Published onSeptember 21, 2011

Around slightly more than half a million new devices running on the Android platform are activated everyday around the globe. This is surely a testament to the dominance of this mobile operating system in the smartphone and tablet market. It’s been said that one of the unique selling points is the availability of numerous device choices.

Unfortunately this quality can be a two-edged sword. While giving users a multitude of options to fit their mobile needs and budget is typically a good thing, regular consumers are usually not tech-savvy enough to comprehend the differences between hardware specifications and the consequent advantages they are supposed to offer.

HTC, Motorola, Samsung – these are just some of the bigger names among the list of manufacturers that design and make gadgets for the platform. And even if you limit yourself among these three, you still have to comb through a variety of product lines. What version of Android does it run on? How much memory does it have and can it be upgraded? How fast does it operate? Can you really tell the difference between single and dual-core processor performance? If you didn’t do a bit of research and comparison shopping beforehand, you’re likely going to get confused or rely on the sales talk.

Google isn’t unaware of the possible weakness of this open strategy. Their Nexus brand is a way to establish at least one line that has a more strictly synergized hardware and operating system. The upcoming Android 4.0 dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich is another innovation than can make things less complicated for the user.

It combines Android 2.3 Gingerbread for smartphones and Android 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets into a single operating system. Perhaps in this way, the Android platform can step up the competition against iOS.