Google has revealed that while it will be giving a free upgrade for its Nexus S smartphones to Android 4.0, owners of its predecessor, the Nexus One, will go without. The hardware is too old to run it, Android Product Management lead Hugo Barra said.
He made the comment while he was responding to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s assault on Android’s perceived complexity. He claimed that Android phones “needed a computer science degree” to use properly where Windows Phone was supposedly simpler.
The Nexus One was launched in January 2010. Made by HTC, it was the first ‘reference’ Android phone, where Google not only had stock Android but direct influence over the hardware. It originally sported Android 2.1 and supports newer versions of Android 2.3. Even then there were some indications that the phone was hardware limited. Video chatting was not possible because the phone was not equipped with a front-facing camera. The update also didn’t support voice chatting.
The block on updates may hint that a wave of phones using the same first-generation, 1GHz Snapdragon processor or slower chips might be ineligible for Android 4.0, excluding HTC’s related Desire as well as the Evo 4G and others at similar speeds
