LG has sent some people into a buzz with their recent comment on Facebook regarding Android 2.3 Gingerbread not coming to the Optimus Android smartphone lineup. While responding to a question as to when the Optimus line would be receiving the Gingerbread update, LG, likely only for the sake of keeping things as simple as possible, said that Gingerbread requires at least a 1GHz CPU, and the Optimus line would not be getting the update.
LG likely didn’t want to dive into the specific details as to why their Optimus line will not be making the upgrade to Gingerbread, and so chose to explain the situation in the simplest way they knew how. We’re not going to say that they “lied,” but it seems that the truth is not matching up with what LG claimed. After all, it’s much easier to say that Gingerbread has a 1GHz CPU requirement than for them to break down what kind of processors can make the cut, and why others can’t.
To imagine that the T-Mobile G2’s 800MHz CPU, which is as fast (if not faster) as the competition, can’t handle Gingerbread because of raw processing power sounds absurd. LG was keeping it simple, and we can’t blame them for that. It just may be that the Optimus line may not collectively be able to support the OS update with other components also being a factor.
Then I saw that Romain Guy, an Android engineer, recently posted the following on Twitter, confirming what I was believing.
Random note: there’s no hard minimum processor requirement for Gingerbread. Trust me, if there were I’d know. 😉 (via @morrildl) #android
It’s true that Android does not have hard requirements for CPU, or even GPU. That said, as the OS evolves, older devices will fall behind. But, those older devices won’t get updates to newer Android OS version due to various factors, not simply because it’s a few hundred MHz slower than a requirement that doesn’t exist. As time goes on, the loose requirements will probably get higher, but isn’t that how technology works?
So LG bent the truth a little bit earlier today, only for simplicity’s sake. Gingerbread may not have hard minimum requirements, but there is a range of hardware specs that will ultimately doom a handset to no longer get any updates. Either way, it’s possible that the Optimus S and other variants will eventually see Gingerbread, just not unofficially.
[UPDATE] LG has responded regarding the chances for the Optimus line to receive Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
LG will upgrade all Optimus One smartphones currently using the Froyo OS to the next version of the Android OS, Gingerbread.
Details of the upgrade schedule will be announced locally in due course.
We sincerely apologize for the confusion and misunderstanding that was caused regarding this issue.
www.lgusa.com/Optimus_One_OS_Upgrade
Sounds good so far, but does the Optimus One cover the Optimus S, T, and U as well? Hope so.
[Via: Facebook, Twitter]