Who's fragmented now?

You may be aware I'm not a fan of Android. But that on the other hand, I love the HTC One. I usually don't really care much about fragmentation and what OS version I'm running (though I do when it comes to app compatibility and availability), and the thing I like most is a proper well built version with no BS or bloatware.

If you read previous rants you know I find the Samsung Galaxy S4 to be the freaking Xmas tree of smartphones, and that it's user experience failed to deliver. On the other hand, the HTC One (despite the mandatory "blink feed") presented a stunningly fast, discrete and effective usage experience.

(click to read The Galaxy S4 vs HTC One post)

But anyway none has received the 4.3 update, let alone the new 4.4 Kit-Kat because fragmentation. So why dig this up now? Well, you can now mostly disregard the software upgrade international, local and carrier version barriers and install the 4.4 experience on any Android (though some older may need some additional hacking). You can see how on a previous post here.

Most importantly, Google services, their real strong point, are now better and more integrated than ever.

- GMail, Google Drive & Quick Office. You can now edit any document, store it in Drive and access it anywhere, and you even got a space boost for using Quick Office.

- Plus and YouTube. Latest comment integration makes youtube video social sharing (via Plus, obviously) automatic, and it's still Facebook and Twitter friendly.

- Add to Picasa/Plus the new Photos integration

- We now also have Talk/Hangouts with SMS integrated

- And you still have Blogger, Chrome and the extraordinary Maps/Earth duo and Navigation, and Music.

So Google is now clearly a global service provider and is developing pretty good integration between those services. And that tends to get better and better with time. Adding 4.4 support for mid to low end devices with min 512MB will also eliminate reduce the fragmentation problem, allowing virtually anyone to use them.

Point being I'm now using an "old" Android device, running an "outdated" OS version and having a pretty good user experience and access to all the above "goodness" just by installing a few APKs.

Ironically, while Apple has kept to the original iPhone plan (build the HW and OS, let others do the services, being Google the partner at the time) now it has spread across external natively supported service providers (Vimeo, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr) mixing them with it's own services and apps (iCloud, iMovie, iPhoto), endeavoring in new or improved (iMessage, mail, cloud), while still accepting to somehow accommodate the competition's services as well (Google, Microsoft, Dropbox).

Now add to that the fact that the iPhone5S and iOS7 has very little new to offer to prevent people from changing, besides a pretty awesome camera.

And that all Google services or apps are completely free, while Apple has made a pretty good mess of it's iWork/iLife mobile apps pricing, and their add-ons.

Ah, I can already hear the fanboys: "Who's fragmented now, bitch?"