Some days ago, several popular tech-pages reported a “ground-breaking”  alteration by Google according their requirements for OEMs. All began with this android-dev blogpost, called “Holo Everywhere”. It is basically an introduction for developers on how to use the Holo Theme.

A big problem of developers usually is that in nearly all cases you aren’t able to use the ”Default-Theme“, because every manufacturer changes it on their own (e.g. with TouchWiz, HTC Sense,…). This makes the result nearly unpredictable so nearly every developer designs his own interface, which results in  very different appearences through all Android applications.

To counter this problem of fragmentation Google introduced a new requirement for every OEM, who wants to publish a device with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.  Beginning with ICS it’s every OEM’s duty to include the “Holo Theme“.  As a result of that, every developer can rely on the fact that his/her app’s appearence will not change because of the OEM’s customizations, if they use it. Still, the “Default Theme” can be changed by the manufacturer, so they are still able to customize it – however, the developer can also still create his own theme, for his application.
Anyway, this is a fact known since the release of the Android 4.0 SDK back in October 2011. I don’t really get, why everyone freaking out about it now. The only question at the moment is, how far are they obliged to include the Holo Theme. Will it really be the whole theme?

However, a good step against fragmentation and I hope I could bring some light in these articles.

Picture: Holo-Theme ( Source: android-developers.blogspot.com)