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Google has denied it will put Motorola first in the queue for Android. The search giant just bought the phone manufacturer, but reckons it won’t give the latest updates to Motorola before any of its other Android partners, such as Samsung and HTC.
After the Big G announced it was buying Motorola, other phone makers that use Android could be forgiven for being concerned Motorola could have an unfair advantage. But Google boss Eric Schmidt reassures Android partners that the search giant won’t favour Motorola with quicker updates.
Schmidt said Motorola Mobility would be run “independently” and “will not violate the openness of Android”.
That’ll be reassuring to HTC and Samsung, currently entrenched in the front lines of a legal battle with Apple over their rival phone operating systems. Apple claims Android copies ideas from the iPhone and iPad, and is attacking the manufacturers rather than going after Google directly.
Apple founder Steve Jobs, who died recently, vowed “thermonuclear war” against Android. Schmidt refused to comment, except to “point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort”. (Android was founded in 2003 before being bought by Google in 2005 and releasing its first software in 2007, shortly after the launch of the first iPhone, which began development in 2005. The iPhone 3G preceded the first Android phones by a few months in 2008.)
Looking to the future, we wonder whether Motorola will build the next flagship Android phone. Google works closely with a handset maker on one flagship phone for each generation of Android. That hero phone bears the name Nexus and is free of manufacturer’s extras, giving a pure Android experience.
HTC made the first flagship, the Google Nexus One, and Samsung made the Google Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the latest Nexus model and the first to show off Ice Cream Sandwich.
The next version of Android is expected to be Jelly Bean, but there’s no word yet on who will build the phone that shows it off. Will it be Samsung or Motorola — or is it the turn of someone else entirely?
Motorola’s newest Android products are the Motorola Xoom 2, Xoom 2 Media Edition and the Motorola Razr.
