Google has recently announced that they will be limiting support for CDMA phones which run on Android OS. As a result of this news, millions of customers are now worried as to how their CDMA smartphone or tablet will cope with this decision.
The announcement was made via a message on Google Groups, to which Google said they will no longer provide full support for such devices—including the ones supported by Verizon, China Telecom, and several other CDMA-system users. Moreover, they have also introduced changes on the website of their Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
The message read:
“For various technical reasons, recent CDMA Android devices implement core telephony functionality in .apk files provided in binary form by the carriers. To function correctly, these .apk files must be signed by the so-called "platform" key. However, when an individual creates a custom build from the AOSP source code, they don't use the same signing key as these CDMA flies were signed with. The result is that these files don't work properly, and pure AOSP builds running on these devices can't place calls, access mobile data, and so on. Because we aim to make sure that we are as clear as possible about the degree of support that devices have, we updated the docs over at source.android.com to reflect this reality.”
Upon reading or hearing about this, Android CDMA handset users are concerned. Considering that even the recently launched Samsung Galaxy Nexus is included on the list of devices that will no longer be supported, users are wondering what will happen to their devices now.
But Why?
Several experts had an opinion that this decision may be caused by the company’s ongoing spat with Verizon on the issue of its Google Wallet payment system. To this, Google replied that mainstream devices will still be supported. Dan Morrill, Android’s engineer, clarified in a post:
“Just to be clear this change is only related to AOSP support for these devices – that is, personal custom builds. These are obviously still officially-supported Nexus devices for everyday use, they will receive official software updates, and so on. Similarly, these are still fully-supported development devices for app developers.”
Even though the reply reassured some, there are still some lingering questions on this issue, particularly from Android users who wish to customize their devices.
