Andromium OS post MWC & March update

We just got back from MWC and have a lot of exciting developments

As many of our forum visitors notice, the Andromium team has been a little bit quiet over at the forums since mid February. Rest assured that the project is moving forward, and in fact has been picking up steams since we ended the Kickstarter campaign and launched our public beta on the google plays store in early February.

We have gotten amazingly positive feedback from our demo at MWC. Many of the Android headset manufacturers that saw our demo at the booth expressed strong interested in bring the platform to market in the emerging countries. In fact we already have a potential partner we are in serious discussion with that could launch the platform in late Summer.

Our vision for Andromium/smartbook platform is to be able to allow the user to purchase a single package that include both a entry level smartphone and the smartbook dock for around $200-$300 USD (final price is set by the launch partner). By selling both the smartbook and smartphone in a single package, it will allow uses to get a streamline sales and support experience (in case there are any warranty or services issues). Additionally we can also guarantee 100% compatibility between the Android phone and the smartbook. We believe that for the emerging market where we targeting the Andromium Platform, this will provide the best channel to help us get mass adoption.

What about users in the developed markets (US, Europe...)?
Since we launched the public beta in early February, we have gotten over 3k downloads and great feedbacks and encouragements from many of our testers. From looking at the users statics, I know that many of our testers are from US and European countries. So we are definitely looking for ways to bring the smartbook dock to those markets as well.

However for the developed markets, it present a specially challenges for our team, since many users in those market tend to use mid range to high end devices, and might not be happy (or willing) to switch to a lower end smartphone just to use the Andromium OS. So we are currently actively talking with manufacturing partners to design a different smartphone dock(a hardware limitation prevent us from reusing the existing dock) that can support most of MHL enable smartphones in the markets today (and in the future). We have a couple concepts that we are exploring that are promising, but nothing ready yet for public announcement. Please stay tune, and visit our forum for the latest updates. Another Kickstarter/Indigogo campaign to launch the smartbook dock for existing android phones are a distinct possibility

What about the current public beta on the Google Playstore?
Our testers having giving us great feedbacks through our forum about the public beta. We are also continually focusing on bug fixes, and streamlining the user experiences. We are please to report that we have fixed majorities of the bugs that users has reported (but still battling a couple annoying, stubborn, and hard to find bugs), please continue to post bug reports to our forum as you find them.

Since the beginning of the public beta, we have always had the firmed requirement we will not required ROOT access to use Andromium OS. But after some serious discussion with our internal testing team, and with device manufactures, we started to realized that there are a few very basic but important UI functionalities that can help streamline the Andromium OS further. Unfortunately we haven't found way to bring those functionalities to our users without ROOT level access. We are currently evaluating the possibilities of of making ROOT access optional to enable those UI functionalities. So don't be surprise is future version of the beta suddenly ask you for superuser approval.

Finally we also changing some internally development priorities. Originally we were suppose to be working on the Andromium OS custom notification framework starting in March, But due to strong demand by our partners to have the Andromium SDK and App store ready for the smartbook bundle launch this summer, we are going to first work on the SDK and App store, before going back to develop the custom notification framework and enhance the widget framework. We are very optimistic that with our own developer SDK and App store, we can quickly grow the Andromium OS ecosystem to bring many new functionalities to our users.

Please continue to support the Andromium OS/Platform project.

Sincerely,

-Gordon Zheng
CEO Andromium Inc.

PS: check out those press coverage we got during MWC.
www.displaydaily.com/videos/16809-andromium-mhl-dock-brings-notebook-functionality-to-smartphones
www.androidiani.com/news/mhl-le-nuove-soluzioni-presentate-al-mwc-2015-233865
www.coolsmartphone.com/2015/03/03/mwc-mhl-bringing-smartbook-to-the-market/