US Army's first smartphone will be powered by Google Android, not Apple - Page 2

[QUOTE=Ecphorizer;1852940]Well no wonder they are using Android. No Apple device is even capable of exchanging medieval requests since, well, medieval times several hundred years ago.

It obviously should have been MEDICAL tasks. Damn predictive text!
Crap is going a bit far though, it's very unusual to find such errors in Applreinsider posts.

Too late. iPhone has already been there and done that. There are quite a few military apps developed by military guys in the field, for use IN the field.

You probably and should know that the Armed Forces are the puppets of Congress and THEIR special interest groups, as well as the Executive branch's "play things". Kinda like Toy Story, which I'm sure you're more than familiar with, as you surely are not even a "tween" yet.

Making derogatory and condescending remarks against the capable and many times heroic members of the Armed Forces, not only makes you 'appear' thoroughly misinformed, but a total, clueless, and beyond a shadow of a doubt... F***ING DOUCHE!

I hate the military (industrial complex) and war... but get real!

PS: even General and later President Eisenhower stated, "beware the military industrial complex". THEY are the enemy within (my words).

Honestly that's what I thought. Wasn't there an article within the last 6 months (and a thread on AI) that said every GI would get an iPod or iPhone?

Kind of wonder who will make the handsets, Koreans perhaps or Taiwanese...

One thing for sure security is not important to them.

The sour grapes on here would make a nice whine.

Hah!

Sloppy reporting by WSJ.

http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/2011...location-info/

Google collect your wifi points if you explicitly tell them to, yet still purge them after a month? The horror.

I am not writing a paper, but since you asked. First, look at this article. Then this other Daring fireball post discussing a business week article is worth looking at as well.




The upshot is hardware manufacturers can't call it Android without gaining Google's approval for modifications. Google isn't going to give the approval unless its services are used. That really isn't open and doesn't promote the innovation Google claims it supports. The Skyhook case is particularly telling because Apple used Skyhook's locations services on the first generation iPhones. Skyhook's services are considered better then what Google offers. Google played another we are just going to take it if you don't give it to us game there.

A good comparison here too - Google responds when asked about this, Apple stays completely silent. I'd be more worried if I was an iPhone owner because Apple appears to have something to hide.

I'm a bit surprised myself that Apple has had nothing official to say. The only comment we've had is a 2nd hand rumor that Apple considers it a bug to be fixed in a firmware update at some point.

I was wondering about that.

Maybe a droid to go with your chainmail.

Nonsense. The iPhone is a very robust phone. Sure, a small percentage break, but when you hit something with a hammer, that's bound to happen. Heck, I fell into the pool with my iPhone. After it dried out, it worked fine.


FAR more likely to happen with Android than with iOS.


I have enough respect for the military to want them to have the best tools available with the highest level of security. When it comes to how easy it is to hack a phone and get your malware installed, Android is the WORST possible solution.

Very few people advocate the phone because it's 'slick'. That's just a stupid straw man argument that the Apple-bashers come up with. Most people buy the iPhone because it's reliable, lightweight, easy to use, and flexible - all of which are useful in military environments. The fact that it's 'slick' is just a nice bonus.

I really wish people who have never even touched an iPhone would stop making stupid comments about things they don't understand.


Clearly, Google has an enormous problem with security. But even worse than that is their penchant for selling every bit of data they can get their greedy little hands on. Wait until you see an app in the Android Store called "Find your Soldier" which allows you to track your soldier anywhere in the world.


You obviously have no experience in how major decisions like this are made. The government is no different than business in this respect - they are more likely to make major purchases from someone that they have a relationship with. If two companies offer equivalent solutions and one is brand new to the buyer while the other one has known the buyer for years, the one the buyer knows will win an overwhelming percentage of the time. Relationships matter.

When I read that I was thinking Medical-Evaluation.

some definitions for RANK:
a row, line, or series of things or persons: orchestra players arranged in ranks.
orderly arrangement; array.
Also called determinant rank. Mathematics . the order of the nonzero determinant of greatest order that can be selected from a given matrix by the elimination of rows and columns

Need to develop an app, then Xcode make sense.

Need to develop an OS, then Android makes sense.

Wow. So many experts in OS development for military uses gathered in one thread. So far we've found that Apple would never let iOS be modified for custom uses. And they'd never expose their technologies to the NSA or CIA. The Android OS is obviously rift with security issues and viruses as everyone knows. And the military is plainly cheap and going with 2nd best to save money.

The only solid truth in the entire article so far? Apparently the military has settled on an Android solution for their warfield smartphone development. It's not dissing Apple. Android was determined to match their requirements better. That's pretty much the story.

Android is not Linux. It merely uses a Linux kernel. Linux, the OS, has many built-in security mechanisms that make it secure. If Google just takes the kernel and doesn't implement Linux security into their OS, then it can become very vulnerable, indeed. On top of that, no OS in the world can protect itself from dumb users. If an app tells a user it needs administrative access, and the user clicks "ok" without much thought about what they're agreeing to, then every scheme possible for preventing malicious code is doomed.

This whole concept is sidetracking people's common sense. Small comfort to be walking down an Iraqi or Afghan road tapping away on a glass screen, only to be taken out by a sniper or IED. On the foot soldier's personal priority list for staying alive and defeating the enemy - devices must never distract from combat skills, weapons and protective equipment. Armchair warriors and gamers take note.

It doesn't matter. Android is open source. US Army can rewrite part or the entire Android to suit its needs. Besides, I don't think the Army will allow users to just download and install any app on it.

Actually some of the world's top hackers have yet to be successful at penetrating Android's security protocols to gain assess to the OS itself, something Apple has had some issues with. Wouldn't that make Android one of the best possible OS solutions from a security standpoint?

Baloney. There are hundreds of reports of Android security problems and phones being taken over by hackers.

You really don’t think that a handheld device makes no sense if it means the user’s eyeballs can’t be looking for snipers or IEDs at the same time they are using it? Um… maps, field guides, etc. This isn’t going to be Android with a version of Angry Birds: installed where the birds look like American soldiers and the pigs look like enemy combatants… though I’d probably buy that version, too.

PS: Can’t wait for the May update to Angry Birds: Rio.

Source? The only issues I've seen are from 3rd party applications with malware embedded. That's a problem with the App market, not android itself.

So I'll repeat, at gatherings of some of the world's top hackers, Apple's OS been broached in seconds, but no such success with Android. Or with Chrome for that matter. That by itself doesns't make Android the best choice I'm sure. But claiming Android as the worst possible solution due to security issues is factually incorrect.

The apps run on the OS. If the OS isn’t sandboxing the apps to prevent them getting root access then it’s the OS that is the issue.


“At gatherings of some of the world's top [cat burglars], [rich homes with good security have] been broached in seconds, but no such success with [poor homes with the key hidden under the mat]. Or with [piles of money stacked in a doghouse saying “free monies”] for that matter. That by itself doesns't make [rich homes the less secure] choice I'm sure. But claiming [rich homes with more cred among cat burglars] as the worst possible solution [despite their security efforts] is factually incorrect."

SnootyVille - top notch.

Apple's interest is in consumer products and that's what it markets best. Historically Apple's business and government sales groups have been somewhere between pitiful and non existent. Recently Apple has taken some interest in selling iPhones to business but they don't have a real system for selling to the government. They just don't care about it.

I'm with Unibrow Joe on this one!

iPhones are the better choice for people who tend to fall into pools.

I've always considered Apple to be a somewhat "leftist", typical Californian peace loving company, that rather spends $100,000.00 on gay rights than getting involved in (or money from) military war actions.

In the context of the article the difference is that the US Army can look at how Android handles tracking, fork the OS and customise or remove that code.

With iOS they don't have that option.

This is great news! Let android be that gotta hack system. Leave my macs alone and let them be the choice of artists, hipsters, and rich old people. It may sound like a joke but honestly it better that way. Otherwise apple would succumb to the same problems that windows has with everyone writing viruses and trying to break it all the time.

The army wanted to build a custom phone to their specs. I'm sure they'd want to customize the OS too! Since you can't put iOS on it or customize it what choice did they have? As great as iOS is, customizable it's not!

The phone has to be ruggedized and customizes. For those reasons alone, the iPhone is out.

Dude, never say "never". Obviously we don't know what happened behind closed doors that prompted the US Army to investigate the Android route (remember, this is just testing, not full-on implementation) rather than iOS. But there's absolutely no reason why Apple couldn't produce ruggedized, military-grade versions of their hardware and software. There are any number of reasons why things didn't go that route, but to say "Apple would never..." is as short-sighted as comments like "Apple will never get into the mobile phone market (Apple could never compete in an already saturated market)." "Apple will never switch to Intel." "Apple will never make a tablet computer (Others have tried before and failed)." etc.

I have nothing but the highest respect for those out there in the frontlines. I also agree with your sentiment about politicians (although I disagree with your sentiment about the iPhone).

However, it's important to point out that we have a volunteer army, and people who signed up did so on their own free will knowing that there was a chance that they could be in harm's way.

Wouldn't matter if it was open source or not. The federal government is immune to patent infringement lawsuits. It can be sued for reasonable compensation, but not infringement. In other words, the federal government doesn't have to ask permission to use a patented idea.

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who's the third party developer diebold?

if you kill or rape a civilian, the phone tells your superiors it was an apple fan boy?

I was going to say the same thing. Even before the iPhone, the US military was using iPods for a variety of purposes, such as translation. Like Pilots are doing now with iPads, you can put entire updated military manuals on such devices.

The military buy the way is only using Google's OS indirectly. The handset manufacturer is selling a handset using a modified version of the OS to run customized applications. The military is buying the handset not the OS.

You lost me on that one Solipcism.

Anyway, the OS is not the issue with Android. It's that the App market is more of a wild west compared to the insulated iOS market. Apps are vetted by Apple on an individual basis. Google does not.

You can find the same types of security issues with iOS when users jailbreak their phones and load unapproved 3rd party apps. Does that make iOS the problem?