Gold master status

iOS 5 is rumored to be in "gold master" status, which means we could see it very, very soon. It brings the promise of cloud connectivity, OTA updates: Yes, you can finally "cut the cord" to your PC and access iTunes in the cloud (a feature which remains to be seen). Frankly, I'm OK with the chord because I lean on iPhoto on my Mac to catalog the reams of photos I capture on my phone.

The end of fragmentation?

But, the key feature we expect to see in iOS 5 is the (fingers-crossed) end of OS fragmentation. As a iPhone customer who jumped ship from AT&T to Verizon, I'm looking forward to this day. With Sprint rumored to get the iPhone 5 (in addition to other vendors), the signs are there that we'll hopefully get a unified platform across hardware.

Granted iOS hasn't been as nearly plagued by fragmentation as Android, which has some big problems in that department. Google knows they have to fix their fragmentation problem. Surely Android was never intended to fall apart like this. Hardware vendors went off and did their own thing and 'Droid owners were rooting their phones left and right to get around the problem. Google's hope to not let iOS 5 get too far away from them lies in their next release (code name: ice cream sandwich).

An uphill battle for Google

Sure, iOS has some older hardware than Android to content with, if you include the first round of original iPhone 3G phones. But in Apple's favor, even if they can address all of their aging hardware with iOS 5, they still have far fewer models that need to work with the new OS. Android on the other hand has hundreds of handsets across dozens of manufacturers to contend with; with varying degrees of hardware. The likelihood that Google can reign back in Android is low. Perhaps Apple's strict control of hardware and carriers will pay off when iOS 5 launches.

Only time will tell.