As the post below says, this may not actually be an important leak. But, it does highlight the issues with the "fragmentation" issue in a much more real way than we've seen before.
What happens to all these Android handsets sold that don't get updated if a major security hole is found in Android 2.2? Almost none of them have official upgrade routes to 2.3 at this point, and I find it hard to imagine that they would be able to get out a 2.3 release to fix security hole in a reasonable amount of time if they haven't been able to get it out in general for about six months now.
I obviously hope there isn't any security holes that are discovered. But it would be interesting to see how the Android vendors would react to that situation — especially if it was something Google couldn't fix easily in an Android Market-distributed patch, like the "malware" earlier this year.
(Apple is no better here, fwiw: the iPhone 2G was excluded from any fix to the remote "JailbreakMe" exploit, and the iPhone 3G never got any fix to the location "tracking" controversy.)
As it came to light during previous instances: there are different types of updates deployed by the carries and device makers that vary in urgency, one type is 'critical' updates that get deployed quickly, all the phones don't have to be running the latest version to be patched.
What happens to all these Android handsets sold that don't get updated if a major security hole is found in Android 2.2? Almost none of them have official upgrade routes to 2.3 at this point, and I find it hard to imagine that they would be able to get out a 2.3 release to fix security hole in a reasonable amount of time if they haven't been able to get it out in general for about six months now.
I obviously hope there isn't any security holes that are discovered. But it would be interesting to see how the Android vendors would react to that situation — especially if it was something Google couldn't fix easily in an Android Market-distributed patch, like the "malware" earlier this year.
(Apple is no better here, fwiw: the iPhone 2G was excluded from any fix to the remote "JailbreakMe" exploit, and the iPhone 3G never got any fix to the location "tracking" controversy.)