Memo to all Android OEM's (and US carriers)

This was an open letter posted in the android central.com forums

Dear Manufacturer,

We are very glad you are introducing yet another flagship Android handset. Please make sure you follow these simple sensible rules and guidelines -

Hardware -

Choose a SoC which has a decent cpu *and* gpu (note - this means no Tegra 3) No physical keyboard No hardware buttons (it's 2012) A big battery (min acceptable is 2000mAh. It *is* possible to have a thin device with a large battery) Thinness is not the ultimate end goal HD screen is preferred Don't reserve 1/2 the storage space and advertise it falsely MicroSD HDMI NFC Decent camera (zero shutter lag, low light) Loud volume (handset and speaker) Quadrant scores and benchmarks don't matter

Software -

Unlocked bootloader Give users an option to turn off your custom skin At least pretend you'll commit to updates in a timely manner (this means at most 2 months after a new Android version, and support for at least 2 years) Make drivers for your proprietary components available, or better yet open source Commit to release dates

None of this is hard. You are free to introduce 10 different variants which don't have these features, but for your flagship these are a must. This is all your users want - the geeks posting on this forum, and the ones who walk into your stores. It will save you dev costs, you'll save millions on all those market research firms and consultants, and you'll have a huge hit.