Congratulations, Netflix fan! If you've been waiting for this service to come to your Android device, you're in luck: A new update to the Netflix app now means that the streaming movie service runs on all Android 2.2 and Android 2.3 devices!
Sorry, Honeycomb users.
The new Netflix update brings the app to version 1.4, which also brings Netflix to the roughly 80 percent of all Android smartphones that run either Android 2.2 (Froyo) or Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). It's been a long time coming for frustrated users of both Netflix and Android, as the service has been device-specific on the Android platform up until this point.
"The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android," wrote Greg Peters, vice president of partner product development, in a Netflix blog post last November. "The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. "
As a result, Netflix launched on the Android Market in May supporting only five devices. The number jumped up to nine a few months later, and then ballooned up to 24 with the release of Netflix version 1.3 in July – including one Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet, the Lenovo IdeaPad.
Which brings us to the bad news about Netflix 1.4: Smartphones are the big winners this time around, as the update does not bring universal Netflix support to Android tablets running the latest version of Google's OS. Only two Honeycomb tablets remain Netflix-friendly at the time of this article's writing: the aforementioned IdeaPad and Lenovo's ThinkPad tablet.
As well, there's still a decent subset of Android smartphone users who won't be able to tap into Netflix streaming on their devices: According to Google's statistics, roughly 15 percent of smartphone users are still stuck on Android 2.1 (or lower). Admittedly, the gap has been shrinking over the past six months.
Interested Netflix fans will have to pony up a minimum of $7.99 monthly in order to tap into mobile device streaming.
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