Will HTC Hero skip Android 2.0 upgrade and go directly to Android 2.1/Flan?

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Remember my WAT (Wild arsed guess), that we won’t see any more Android 2.0 phones this year, if ever?

Well, more then a month has passed since the announcement of Motorola Droid, holiday shopping season is in full swing, but we still have not seen a single other handset running Android 2.0.

And, even though Google has made the source code for Android 2.0 available to third parties now, it seems that even the wilder part of my guess, which I myself only half believed, is coming true as well.

The one, where I speculated that most of the cellphone makers will skip Android 2.0 version altogether, and will opt for Android 2.1/Flan version of the OS for their next devices/upgrades.

At least if the screenshots of HTC Hero, the most advanced of Android devices before Droid, running Android 2.1/Flan are genuine, and point to things, HTC has planned for the Hero and their next Android handsets.

And it certainly makes sense. Even on Droid, where it was exclusively tailored by joint Google/Motorola team, Android 2.0 faces multiple software glitches and bugs.

Getting Android 2.0, as it is now, to work flawlessly on another generic device, might be a pretty steep challenge. And don’t forget all the work, that must go into making HTC’s proprietary Sense UI working with it.

So if another, better version of Android, like Flan, is almost ready to ship, why not wait a few weeks and save all the additional work?

Via BeGeek