AT&T – not really getting into the spirit of Android

“Innovating in the open
Each member of the Open Handset Alliance is strongly committed to greater openness in the mobile ecosystem. Increased openness will enable everyone in our industry to innovate more rapidly and respond better to consumers’ demands. Our first joint project as a new Alliance is Androidâ„¢. Android was built from the ground up with the explicit goal to be the first open, complete, and free platform created specifically for mobile devices.”

Some of you out there will recognise the text above; it’s from the Open Handset Alliance’s overview text. That, right there, details one of the main strengths of Android: openness. There are some though, who, whilst happy to jump on the Android bandwagon (hey, it’s hot right now, we’ll sell some phones off the back of the hype, right?) would far rather that you didn’t have any of this, “open and free platform” nonsense. Take AT&T for example: on their first Android device, the Motorola BACKFLIP, not only have they locked out Google as the default search option, they’ve also disabled installation of all apps from sources other than the official Android Market. Now, at first glance, that may not seem like such a big deal. Annoying and unsurprising from AT&T, yes, but not the end of the world, right?

When you dig a bit deeper however, it opens up a whole bucketfull of worms. If users can’t install non-Android Market apps, how does a developer get BACKFLIP owners to alpha or beta test his or her apps? How often have we seen apps that have device-specific issues? No developer will know for certain if their app works on the BACKFLIP if no-one, themselves included, can install the app on the phone until it’s published.

Worse still, if you are an enterprise customer who planned on issuing the BACKFLIP to some of your staff, you can’t just roll out published apps from your corporate servers. Whilst there are probably not that many companies using Android apps developed in-house as yet, I expect that, with how open Android is meant to be, there soon will be. It will impact on the developers of enterprise products too. Take NitroDesk, developers of the Exchange sync app, Touchdown. They recently made a blogpost detailing their growing concerns over the situation-

(one of the main attractions of Android is…) “the ability for an enterprise to publish an application to their intranet/extranet site and have users point their device browser to it to install it on their devices. This is pretty powerful in the future if you expect enterprises to adopt android en masse, publishing their internal applications without having the whole world see it and rate it and post spam on its comments.”

They go on to add-

“I really hope this practice stops with this particular device, and does not spread to other phones and other carriers.. it will be the beginning of the end for Android.”

The development community aren’t the only ones upset about the walled garden that is the BACKFLIP. As well as a steadily growing Remove the Motorola Backflip’s Restrictions community which has popped up on Facebook, there are also a number of forums, such as the AT&T and Motorola forums, which are seeing BACKFLIP owners voicing their opinions on the subject. One user, veasley, on the AT&T forums commented-

“It is a big deal, to me, that google was removed because I use google on my windows phone a lot and on my desktop almost exclusively. I have been waiting for both android and palm to show up on ATT but it is discouraging to see what they did to the Backflip. Verizon, who had a reputation for doing this sort of thing, has allowed Android phones to be Androids. That is pretty enticing. I have been with ATT for almost a decade and never considered leaving before but after growing weary of windows phones and watching all the really fun smart phones going to other carriers (though the iphone is a great phone in my book) I was elated to see ATT branch out a little. When I discovered before the release date the default browser for the Backflip would be Yahoo I decided to wait for Palm to arrive. If the Palm phone(s) receive the same treatment I will go to Verizon. I don’t begrudge ATT for making what they consider good business decisions. They have the right as a private enterprise to do so. What I am saying is that if they continue denying the options I want in a phone ATT becomes a bad fit for me. I have a feeling I am not the only one who feel this way.”

It’ll be interesting to see if AT&T continue this trend with future Android phones. I suspect they will, but of more concern is whether other carriers, having seen AT&T try it, will consider similar measures in future. I sincerely hope not. Of course some carriers (for example, Sprint and T-Mobile) are members of the Open Handset Alliance, and so they would be unable (and, one assumes, unwilling) to lock things down in such a fashion, but if big players in the US like AT&T and Verizon steer their Android offerings in this stifling direction, it could have disastrous effects for Android in the long term.