HTC’s recently released android flagship, the Desire, has drawn a lot of attention in the past few months, almost all of it positive, but a small oversight by Google and HTC has managed to undermine a large selling point of Android, the app marketplace.
It seems that unbranded HTC Desire handsets sold at retail are unable to access protected applications in the Android market.
Reports are cropping up on forums like XDA Developers, claiming that purchased unbranded HTC Desires are unable to access portions of the applications on the market because the phones are not given approved access by Google to the store.
This is apparently down to Google having not implemented the ability of the Android market to recognize the fingerprint of the phone.
Basically when a new phone/firmware is released, HTC sends the build to Google, including the device fingerprint. That fingerprint is a line of text which the market recognizes as valid and allows the store to show the protected apps.
As it turns out, however, Google simply didn’t get around to enabling this code for the unbranded devices yet, proving a problem for HTC customers.
Google has seen fit to enable protected market apps for Telco branded (subsidized) phones, though, which adds salt to the wounds of those customers who forked out rather a lot of cash to purchase the phone outright.
How Google could manage such an oversight is beyond us, especially as the mobile marketplaces go hand in hand with the success of smartphone devices, as perfectly illustrated by Apple’s app store. Without all the Apps available for the iPhone many people would have given up on the platform long ago.
Google knows this and has made significant efforts to push its marketplace forward, throwing significant weight behind app developers, actively recruiting them to the cause with bonuses like free Nexus Ones to develop on, and other support.
So a snafu like this is something neither Google nor HTC cannot afford to do. We hope they fix the problem soon.
