Why such low end hardware?

[canesfan625]

Perfect the OS first then accelerate hardware. Anyone remember iPhone 1&2?

You mean waiting 2-3 years to get basic features that feature phones had is unacceptable? You still cant send attachments from emails

 

[mparker]

Yes not right now but Tango will get even cheaper next year

Not sure what you mean by this? The OS itself will get cheaper? It's not the cost of the OS that's the issue, it's the cost of the hardware needed to run it. If you're saying that newer versions of Tango will lower the hardware requirements then that would indeed lower the cost of Tango handsets, but will also create more fragmentation. If that happens, then next year we will have this hypothetical ultra-low-spec tango (gen 3 tango 64mb/320x240px screens), 256mb tango (gen 2 tango), 512mb pre-mango (1st gen unupgraded), 512mb mango (gen 1/2 mango), 512mb Apollo (gen2 upgraded to Apollo), and maybe 1gb multicore Apollo (gen3 handsets). That's starting to become significant fragmentation, though it still may not be a problem since the low-spec devices should mostly be isolated geographically and linguistically, and most developers can just target the Mango API for the next year or so until the Mango installed base declines enough to be ignored.