Hey Google, Want To Fix Android Updates? Hit OEMs Where It Hurts (arstechnica.com) 190
Yesterday we talked about some of Nexus devices, including 2013's Nexus 5 not receiving an update, because it has been more than two years since the launch of the phone. But as you may know, this commitment to keeping the devices up to date is even worse when you look at what other Android OEMs are doing. ArsTechnica's Ron Amadeo has a solution: Google keeps missing the point when it comes to addressing Android's update situation. It keeps coming up with strategies to make updating "easier" for OEMs, but I don't think the problem is "ease of updating" -- it's creating any incentive for OEMs to update at all. Google seems to think that its partners will update phones because it's The Right Thing To Do by their customers and that handing out gold stars will send them scrambling to produce updates for their devices. I don't think that's ever going to happen. Google actually already tried the "shame" tactic and it didn't work. When Google-owned Motorola, Moto's update speed went through the roof. Motorola was achieving near-Nexus-like update speeds on many of its phones and was definitely putting other manufacturers to shame. But the increased update competition never really spurred other OEMs to start competing on update speeds. The bottom line is that Android partners only care about, well, the bottom line -- money. These companies already have your money, so updating a device that's already been sold is a needless expense. There's also a good argument to be made that updating a device hurts future sales. If your phone isn't updated, it will start to feel old, so you're more likely to buy a new phone sooner.
Does "not feeling old" mean minimalized? (Score:5, Insightful)
From my experience, every update removes useful power user features.
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From my experience, every update removes useful power user features.
For example?
Re: Does "not feeling old" mean minimalized? (Score:5, Insightful)
Root.
Unless you bought a device with an unlockable bootloader, any way that you can get root is a bug, not a feature. It may useful to you, but it would be equally useful to an attacker.
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Non-unlockable bootloaders are a bug.
I agree. Talk to your device manufacturer about their bug, but I don't expect them to listen to you. If you want to avoid that bug, you have to buy a device from an OEM that allows unlocking. If enough people voted with their wallets in this way OEMs *would* listen, and non-unlockable bootloaders would disappear.
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Yes, and each update brings yet another google-something application into phone. On my Nexus there are more than 30 useless google applications which try to get updates every month. Too bad they google does not want to fix the bad sound quality or random battery consumption peak but only add more and more useless crapware.
Google's management quality is degrading rapidly. (Score:2)
Quote: "... 30 useless Google applications which try to get updates every month."
Posted this comment yesterday, to another Slashdot story: Google's management quality is degrading rapidly. [slashdot.org]
Google is allowing phone companies to abuse customers, so the phone companies can make more money. Google is also doing its own abuse, as the parent comment says. My opinion.
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That's why I finally bit the bullet and went Nexus with latest phone. Unlocking bootloader done within twenty minutes of getting it. No need for hacks to enable tethering. Root without having to use an exploit.
Like most Android phones as long as you don't buy them from your carrier.
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Outdated phone software drive sales... away (Score:2)
The summary says "If your phone isn't updated, it will start to feel old, so you're more likely to buy a new phone sooner". If you don't make your users happy by keeping them updated, Android isn't tied to one vendor, they can just as easily be driven to another handset vendor the next time. Better to have all your customers update 50% less often than to lose half of them to the company that cares about its customers.
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samsung on verizon gets updates every few months
And that's one more reason why Samsung is killing everyone else, other than Apple. LG, HTC and others should be learning from that, but they aren't.
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show me the money $$$$$$$$ (Score:4, Insightful)
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So instead of spending money creating a proprietary custom Android build, why don't they build a phone that's supported by AOSP out of the box that way their development effort is significantly less and the phone gets updates - thus saving money, not spending it.
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Bloatware is profitable. They are either paid to bundle that shit in there or they are hoping to hook you into their ecosystem.
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Because otherwise a Samsung phone would be like any other Android smartphone.
They don't want that, for two reasons. First, they don't want to compete with similar looking but much cheaper alternatives. Second, they don't want give too much power to Google.
They want people to buy "a Samsung", not an Android phone.
In fact, Samsung seems to be ready to leave Android at any time, probably as a way to keep Google in check. They have their own OS, their own app store, replacement apps for most of Google offerings
Simple answer: (Score:2)
Charge for the non-security feature updates -- maybe even do it through the app store. Customers have to pay for updates one way or the other, so you should be able to sell a competitively priced phone and then make just as much money selling fewer physical phones and more software updates as you would under the status quo. That'd be good for the environment too.
The one sticking point is, as always, the carriers. They'd much rather you trade in your perfectly good phone for another one whose price is rol
or, maybe Google screwed up "ownership" (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google had designed (? or something?) Android so that updating the base OS was something that could be pushed direct from Google instead of from each manufacturer's bollixed version of the system, there'd be no problem for any of us. Seeing as how Google{sheets, +, play, docs,} and other default apps get updated just fine, why not the OS as well -- without any interaction with the phone vendors?
Re:or, maybe Google screwed up "ownership" (Score:4, Informative)
The only way I can see this working is if Android becomes a microkernel, and Google sticks its tentacles into everything around it. That way the OEM is only responsible for a microkernel.
Any embedded developers out there with more info?
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Due to custom compilation of hardware. The OS requires firmware for all of the interfaces and chips. While you may be able to get away with a "One size fits all" solution like Ubuntu on an AMD/Intel chip, there's a huge variety of ARM version chips out there, each with different clock speeds and (presumably) instruction sets. Not to mention all the different WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM/Edge antennae.
The exact same can be said of Intel/AMD. Nearly single piece of hardware has a firmware and software driver component. The only difference between embedded and non-embedded is the size of flash available on the device to store the OS image, but in a few minutes it's easy to strip out unnecessary drivers from an OS image for deployment on a phone. Doing cross compilation for different ARM chips and placing a specific kernel in each OS image is also dirt easy.
As a matter of fact, Cyanogenmod does this exact t
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IMHO this is the exact market CM should have targeted. OEMs that no longer want to support their old crap. CM could have partnered with Samsung, Motorola, LG ... etc to support older phones. They already do it, but rather than "community build", these would be "supported" versions of the same.
It would be a win/win for just about everyone.
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Google is sort of doing that now. Incase you have not read more and more new features are being rolled into Google Play services and the Google Now Launcher. Google controls the version of those two systems with the Google Play Store. It is not prefect but it is better than it was.
Yes you have a lot of different ARM chips but the instruction sets are not very different. Most Android devices use a Cortex A series SOC the wifi and cell radios are also limited in number. The big differences are going to be th
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That way the OEM is only responsible for a microkernel.
Any embedded developers out there with more info?
Yeah... that's not how microkernels work. In a microkernel the device drivers run outside of the kernel - the kernel just implements the minimal core hardware access/virtualization and OS features. The microkernel for an ARM-based platform would probably be highly portable to many different SoCs, but the drivers outside of the microkernel would be specific to the various peripheral features of the SoC & other hardware on each device.
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On x86 platforms, we have standards for dealing with things like booting, drivers etc. That's what's needed for
Android is FOSS (Score:2)
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If Google designed Android so that they could push out forced updates to the OS,
Then they would be no different than Microsoft and Windows 10 forced updates. It would require the same kind of "phone home to momma" (pun intended) "service" running in the background consuming memory and CPU cycles and data all the time. Their current spyware (Location Manager, e.g.) is bad enough.
You might say that using Google's Android is a choice so that makes it different than Windows 10 -- but is it really?
Google only requires you to install their apps if you want access to the Play store.
As I recall, Google requires you to run a verified Google version of Android to access the Pl
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If Google had designed (? or something?) Android so that updating the base OS was something that could be pushed direct from Google instead of from each manufacturer's bollixed version of the system, there'd be no problem for any of us.
That may seem obvious now, but it's far from clear that Android would have succeeded the way it has if OEMs hadn't been allowed to differentiate their versions. That was (and is) something that's important to them, and they may well have decided that they wanted to do their own thing instead if Google hadn't given them the degree of control they wanted. Or maybe they'd have adopted Windows, since while it wouldn't allow them to customize it would have had the advantage of being from the then-biggest OS make
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there'd be no problem for any of us.
There would be one problem for us. We wouldn't be getting Android updates at all as no one would have adopted a system that was designed to be incredibly customisable by a manufacturer to the point that manufacturers repeatedly shipped products that had hardware features which were neither supported by Android nor exposed by its standard APIs, and continue to do so.
Android presents freedom to manufacturers. That's why it exists, and that's why for every iPhone you see at Tele2 you see 20 Android phones.
Thou
Upsell opportunity (Score:2)
It's worse. They see you as an 'upsell' opportunity. My previous none Nexus phone got quite a number of updates. Nearly all contained more crap to sell their own 'services'.
The actual proposal (Score:5, Informative)
"[P]enalize partners by reducing or eliminating that [ad] revenue sharing if they don't push out updates. If an OEM exceeds the curve and stays up to date, increase the amount of revenue sharing."
I really can't imagine the vendors going for this. I doubt the amount of money involved would be sufficient.
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TLA conflates Carrier with OEM. I worked for an OEM and never saw any revenue sharing from Google or the Carrier. Nothing. Zippo. We bid on RFQ's sent out by the carriers every 6 months with the best and lowest bid for slots the carrier had (high end, mid-priced, low, specialized, etc.), competing against every other OEM from Chinese wannabes to Tier 1's. Carrier was always hoping for iPhone quality at a $250 price point and once we sold it, we were onto the next product. In the end, we couldn't compete wit
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The article is right that money talks, but to think they'd give any to an OEM. Ha.
Yep, that basically summarizes the whole problem. Money is the solution, Google doesn't want to share, and so OEMs have no incentive to keep their devices up to date.
And why should they? It's the same problem with all "smart" devices - phones, TVs, set top boxes, etc. Any development effort spent on updating last year's devices is expense with no reward. If Google wants to keep Android devices on the latest version the hardware supports they need to create an incentive for OEMs to spend money to do so.
T
Here you go, the "hurt" part the summary left out (Score:5, Informative)
"We've heard reports that Google shares ad revenue with its partners—if a customer buys a Verizon Samsung phone, performs a Google search, and clicks on an ad, Verizon and Samsung get a portion of that ad revenue. So, penalize partners by reducing or eliminating that revenue sharing if they don't push out updates. If an OEM exceeds the curve and stays up to date, increase the amount of revenue sharing. Threatening to shift the stock price of an OEM by affecting its bottom line is the nuclear option—and, folks, we're at the point where the nuclear option is all that's left."
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There's a simpler answer to this (Score:2)
So IMO the optimal solution is all or some of the following:
1) Legally compel vendors to make known the minimum date of their phone/tablet's last security patch before the customer buys the product. That way, you'll be able to see tha
Re:There's a simpler answer to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Also make it a legal requirement that any phone sold on a long term contract receives security patches for the duration of the contract. Many phones are sold on 2 year contracts these days, but the updates stop long before the contract expires.
Re: There's a simpler answer to this (Score:2)
These days? 2 year contracts are on the way out and most carriers won't even offer them anymore (you have to ask).
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Carriers would find a way around this. e.g. "you have to own the phone before you are eligible for security updates" T-Mobile does the "pay $20 a month" for a new phone, so you wouldn't really own it until your contract was up. That's why I think that "other" brands will start making real inroads into the market - BLU, Huwei, Xiaomi, etc. I have a BLU, and love it. Dual sim, unlocked, octacore, 2GB ram, gorilla glass, for $150. Why would I buy some $600 phone? As long as the manufacturers control the
key escrow (Score:2)
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That's great in theory, but in practice it's horribly restrictive to app developers that want some basic level of consistency among devices. It has nothing to do with "bling" and everything to do with support for all of the apps you use.
More than 10% of our Android app users are still on API 17 or earlier (*4* year old OS). We want to drop support for those devices but 10% is non trivial.
On the other hand, we stopped supporting iOS 6 (also released 4 years ago) so long ago I can't remember, and have requi
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I disagree about the "openness being a disadvantage." Seriously, name one thing that the carriers/OEMs do, in terms of software, that adds any significant value. I throw down the gauntlet.
Samsung added multi-window support years and years ago and gave us the stylus and all its features.
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I disagree about the "openness being a disadvantage." Seriously, name one thing that the carriers/OEMs do, in terms of software, that adds any significant value. I throw down the gauntlet.
The source cheaper hardware that require different (software) drivers. It adds significant value because they make their products more affordable to people who can't pay $700 for a smart phone. This is why Android is 80% of the smart phone market, and also why it's horribly fragmented. The openness is obviously both an advantage and disadvantage - cheaper phones, more market share, but a nightmare for cutting edge app developers to deal with.
Outrageously short service life for updates (Score:5, Insightful)
I still think that two years of updates is outrageous forced obsolescence that is prematurely adding electronic garbage to landfills. They should be forced to provide updates for 5 years. I'm seriously considering going back to an iPhone on my next phone upgrade, despite all the concerns I have about them too. They at least support their hardware for around 5 years.
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I've had my iPhone 6 Plus for a little less than two years now - I'm hoping to get another two or three years out of it. We'll be replacing my wife and my daughter's iPhone 5's this fall, which'll be roughly four years from when we got them.
Four or five years does seem "right" when it comes to the useful lifetime of a phone (any phone - not just iPhones). We're at the point where even older hardware can do pretty much everything you need at an adequate level.
Of course, in the days before smartphones, I thin
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I have a 4S that I purchased outright in Oct 2011. Still on the latest IOS. 5 years old in 2 months.
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It's not 2 years for Nexus devices. It's 2 years for major OS updates (going from Kit Kat to Lollipop to Marshmallow to Nougat...) It's 3 years for minor updates within a given OS version. After 3 years of updates, the base OS doesn't receive updates but it's already likely pretty stable with bugs worked out. Individual Google apps continue to receive updates beyond that.
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I still think that two years of updates is outrageous forced obsolescence that is prematurely adding electronic garbage to landfills.
FWIW, it's actually two years of upgrades and three years of security updates on Nexus devices.
I'm seriously considering going back to an iPhone on my next phone upgrade, despite all the concerns I have about them too. They at least support their hardware for around 5 years.
At least they have done so in the past. Note that they've never made any commitment to that, so they could stop.
And now we all know... (Score:2)
...why I'm only going to buy Nexus devices. Almost every other phone I've bought was basically abandoned. If a couple of guys can do alternative roms and update the phone, the manufacturer should be able to do the same.
Apple updates older devices better than most android OEM's and they seem to have little trouble getting people to upgrade.
As the phone company, I fail to see... (Score:2)
As the phone company, I fail to see how allowing you to push an update that you've not re-certified to not break our network, over our network is going to lock consumers into a new two year contract every 18 months.
We also fail to see how not incentivizing the purchase of a new contact subsidized phone gets the customer locked into a new two year contract every 18 months.
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But yet Apple does it all the time. So does Google if you bought a Nexus directly from them. Why can't the rest?
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But yet Apple does it all the time. So does Google if you bought a Nexus directly from them. Why can't the rest?
Apple does it because you are still incentivized to buy a new iPhone every 18 months, and probably lust after it in a shorter period than that.
Google can update the nexus because it's usually a "bring your own device, off contract" thing. I.e. you bought it without a plan by paying for it up front, and in exchange you get updates and the ability to do exactly the thing carriers don't want you to be able to do: switch carriers. So they charge more on the plan, and you pay maybe 30% of the extra amount (say
Stop obsessing over updates (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an Apple user and currently do not own any Android devices, but the constant force-feeding of updates by Apple might make me jump ship to Android.
I had an iPad 2 that I bought in 2011. It was a great device, very snappy and a pleasure to use. It came with iOS 4. When it upgraded itself to iOS 5, it slowed down a little but was still usable. At this point an alarm went off in my head and I have refused all the pop-ups telling me to update to IOS 6 ever since.
Well lo and behold, in the fullness of time an ignorant member of my family tapped "YES" to the "Update to iOS 6" message. Running iOS 6, the iPad became a complete dog. Launching web browser took 3 seconds whereas it used to be well under a second in iOS 4. Not just the web browser either, doing just about *anything* with the ipad (even viewing photos stored locally) became a lag-fest.
Eventually I upgraded to iOS 7 in hopes that it might help (because Apple does not let you downgrade back to an older iOS version, ever). It did not help. At all. I ended up giving away the iPad because it was pretty much unusable.
But why should it be like that? The iPad's hardware was just as fast in 2015 as it was back in 2011. Aside from the ability to hold a battery charge, it should perform the same.
I would be happy with a setting somewhere that lets you turn off the "Update" pop-ups, but no, Apple does not let you do that. They want you on the latest bloated OS, and if your older hardware can't handle it, buy a new device.
Red Hat updates... (Score:2)
...do not cripple your server with slowdown code. RedHat updates include backported security patches for older versions of their distributed software. From the RedHat wiki: "Red Hat does not update the kernel version, but instead backports new features to the same kernel version with which a particular version of RHEL has been released... Consequently, RHEL may use a Linux kernel with a dated version number, yet the kernel is up-to-date regarding not only security fixes, but also certain features."
The Andro
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Maybe not so odd. Perhaps what is necessary is some kind of delineation between new features or enhancements that require better spec's, and bug fixes or security patches that simply protect the system as it was sold.
Microsoft does this. They break all of their updates down into small, manageable packages that you can either choose to install or...oh wait.
Face it. We don't own our devices; we never did. All they are is the method by which ever-grown amounts of money can be extracted from us whether by plann
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Can't stop progress. New features require new hardware after some time (years, in your case). Your complaint is rather odd.
What's the point of adding features to a device up to the point it becomes too slow to practically use for anything? When you want the latest and greatest that requires a new device, fair enough, you have to buy one, but that doesn't mean that your old device has to be upgraded into uselessness because there are theoretically new features in the world.
What they're missing (Score:2)
There's also a good argument to be made that updating a device hurts future sales. If your phone isn't updated, it will start to feel old, so you're more likely to buy a new phone sooner.
Yes, refusing to provide updates does make phones feel old prematurely, and does make users more likely to upgrade sooner - to OTHER manufacturers' phones! People think, "Oh, jeez, this phone sucks now. I'm not buying another LG, I'll try a Samsung or Motorola (yes, everyone still calls Moto Motorola) this time." So by not providing updates and waiting for users to upgrade when they want to, OEMs are cheapening their own products, and customers notice.
ROFLMAO (Score:2)
Google seems to think that its partners will update phones because it's The Right Thing To Do by their customers and that
Seriously? After all the crap they've gone through involving patents, how could they possibly still be this naive?
A Simpler Solution (Score:2)
Do this enough times and they'll get the hint. Destroy their profits and get judgements to go after their assets and then you'll REALLY
Carriers too (looking at you Verizon) (Score:2)
I had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Nice phone for its day. Never got a single major version upgrade, because the VZN variant used a different SOC from the GSM version, and between Verizon and Samsung, they just said, "meh."
Currently, using a Galaxy S5 on AT&T and while ma bell provides regular security updates, I haven't seen an Android version update since I received it last year. Still on Lollipop (5.1), no Marshmallow, let alone plans for Nougat.
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Actually I did get the upgrade with my Sprint Galaxy Nexus. The Verizon and Sprint phones used the same SOC BTW but Verizon never allowed an update. The Sprint CDMA version did not get as many updates as the GSM version but it did get more than the same phone on Verizon.
Use the Play Store to force updates (Score:2)
Google has a very lengthy set of terms that OEMs must agree to in order to get access to the Google Play store, the Google Play Services middleware layer and various Google apps.
Google could add clauses to these terms such that if OEMs want to be allowed to use the Play store and the other Google software, they must support the device with security updates for a minimum amount of time after the release of the device.
Any OEM that doesn't play ball and follow the rules would risk loosing the right to produce
Google != Microsoft? (Score:2)
Re:A news? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a salient point here, but it's not the one the author is trying to make.
Apple's strategy includes the fact that they make phones which will take the same updates as later phones - at least, to a point. Why aren't android phone makers doing this?
It's a great tool to keep people in your ecosystem. Every time a person goes out and shops for a new phone, they look at all makes and models. If you have a system that defines an upgrade path for users, where they know they'll never be left behind on an antiquated OS, they're MORE likely to upgrade, not less likely.
If android were more portable, or if carriers made their implementations more portable, they could achieve this. So far, it seems the android phone makers' attitudes are to do only enough to sell the phones, and then move on to selling the next phone.
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I should say, defining an ecosystem where users don't feel like they will be left behind makes them comfortable in your ecosystem and more likely to stay in it when they make their next upgrade, and less likely to defect to a competitor.
If my Samsung handset is stuck back in 2013, I might move over to another manufacturer when I upgrade. If I know I'm always going to be safe with Samsung, I'll stay there.
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My Samsung handset is stuck in 2011, and the upgrade path for it ended in 2013. I'm not talking about a software path, but a hardware path: the QWERTY keyboard. It's the main reason I got a smartphone. Now there are none, so I'm going back to a feature phone soon (I'm also tired of paying for "4G" that Sprint never bothered to install in my area).
And before anyone tries to say on-screen keyboards have improved: that's not the point, they're still on the screen obscuring half of what I'm looking at, which
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You could always get a keyboard case. For sure, there's a landscape-mode keyboard case for various iPhones. Not sure about the Android world, but I would assume that they exist there, too.
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Slider keyboards.
Flip phones.
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Nope, nope, hell nope, and nope.
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Dammit, I meant 5 rows.
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I'm also tired of paying for "4G" that Sprint never bothered to install in my area
I experienced the same thing from Sprint. When I bought a 4G phone in June of 2010, they told me that they would have 4G service in Phoenix within a few months. By the time I got a HTC One in 2013 4G was no closer to being in Phoenix, I only got to use it when I traveled to a place like Vegas. I wouldn't go back to Sprint, their coverage map claims that Phoenix is covered but other maps with actual results show spotty coverage where I live and work and very bad speeds.
Re:A news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Third-party Android device makers don't give a shit about Google's "ecosystem." In fact, many such as Amazon and Cyanogen (Inc.) are actively hostile to it.
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How is Cyanogen hostile to the Google ecosystem? It's not bundled in due to legal restrictions placed by Google, but it does absolutely nothing to block or inhibit use of it, and in fact nearly all of the guides on Cyanogen's own website includes the steps needed to load the Google ecosystem. Amazon, on the other hand, does make it difficult to add Google Apps, including restrictions on sideloading.
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Maybe I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that at least part of the reason Cyanogenmod exists was to make a usable Android that didn't depend on Google Play Services. Also, Cyanogen Inc. (the company commercializing Cyanogenmod) has partnered with Microsoft to promote Microsoft services instead of Google's.
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It is true they don't require Google Play Services, that is just an option. They are based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project), which is completely "Google free" (accepting the fact that Android itself is an open sourced Google project). Cyanogen has been commercially released on the OnePlus One with full Google Play Services and has started promoting Microsoft Bing services and Cortana, but nothing tries to prevent you from using the ecosystem of your choice whether that's Bing, Google, Amazon, or pure
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YEAH! How dare anybody ever attempt to make a living from their years of work while not forcing anything on you or charging you a dime for it. They should continue to host the servers, build environments, and provide the download bandwidth as well as do all the work out of their own pocket forever!
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where they know they'll never be left behind on an antiquated OS
You know, there are times when I try to compile or do something on a server where it having an older version of an operating system is a problem. The OS isn't antiquated, it just doesn't have the same version of libraries that the newer ones have, and some developers think they aren't "doing it right" unless they write their code so it won't run on anything other than the current OS. THAT latter bit is what causes the problems I've seen. Developer arrogance/ignorance, not OS obsolescence.
But I have yet to
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Agreed.
Work provided me with a iPhone 4S when they were new. It has received regular updates and I have had no reason to upgrade the phone as it is really my portable email/phone-call machine.
My last personal phone was a HTC, which I loved as a tool. . 3 years later and never an OS upgrade received. Time came to update my personal phone and HTC, as much as I loved it when new, did not get any of my money. If HTC had provided updates, I would still be a customer now.
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So far, it seems the android phone makers' attitudes are to do only enough to sell the phones
Not all manufacturers are the same though. I had a Sprint/HTC phone which fit that model, eventually they just stopped releasing updates for it. It seemed like it was a pain for them to take a new version of Android, make all of the same changes and add all of the same non-removable apps back in, and release it as an update to the phone. I wouldn't want that job, for example, to keep making the same changes to newer versions of software. My OnePlus phone is different though, it's a first generation mode
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There's a salient point here, but it's not the one the author is trying to make.
Apple's strategy includes the fact that they make phones which will take the same updates as later phones - at least, to a point. Why aren't android phone makers doing this?
It's a great tool to keep people in your ecosystem. Every time a person goes out and shops for a new phone, they look at all makes and models. If you have a system that defines an upgrade path for users, where they know they'll never be left behind on an antiquated OS, they're MORE likely to upgrade, not less likely.
If android were more portable, or if carriers made their implementations more portable, they could achieve this. So far, it seems the android phone makers' attitudes are to do only enough to sell the phones, and then move on to selling the next phone.
In Apple's case, they sell both the phone and the OS platform. That role is split on the Android side of things. Google provides the OS to the OEM, who slaps it on the phone, and forgets about it once the customer's out the door. Oh, and there are the carriers as well. As far as Apple goes, they had the clout to force carriers to let them provide end users the upgrades directly, as opposed to the carriers certifying them.
Similarly, good idea would be for Google to be the one certifying each phone for
Re:A news? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wonder how many customers do care about security updates at the very least -- I'm not saying about new OS releases for your two years old smartphone.
If you ask them, "do you care about security updates?" they might say no. But they're more likely to say yes if you ask "are you OK knowing that all of your messages and banking transactions from your phone can be snooped on by a third party because [Verizon/Lenovo/whomever] is trying to force you to buy phones more often?"
Solution: Buy legislators. All of them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep.
Yes. I have a high-end preamp-processor, updatable over the net. Plenty of bugs. Did they ever fix them, much less add new features? No. Did they release a new model? Yes. I have a high-end camera. Updatable over the net. Plenty of bugs. Did they ever fix them, much less add new features? No. Did they release a new model? Yes. I have a high-end radio transceiver. Updatable over the net. Plenty of bugs. Did they ever fix them, much less add new features? No. Did they release a new model? Yes. And so on.
The whole "we can update your device" bit is a scam (and often, so is the "we can update your software" bit.) The only way a corporation is likely to actually update hardware responsibly is if legislation forces them to. And good luck trying to get THAT in place when corporations outright buy the decisions of the legislatures.
Re:Solution: Buy legislators. All of them. (Score:4, Insightful)
True enough, but do you do your banking, internet searches and browsing, email, etc on your high-end preamp processor or printer? I didn't think so.
Smartphones are more and more becoming our primary computing devices and they're networked by definition. That makes them pretty dangerous devices to be casual about security updates on. The OEM's don't update them because nobody's pressuring them (enough) to do it. If Google simply advertised Nexus phones on the basis of their regular upgrade schedule, they might produce the kind of competition that would get the OEM's off their asses.
That said, the Android device market is a nasty space to operate in. Some OEM's have dozens of models. Whether they needed to produce them to compete in a highly competitive market - or whether they were just throwing stuff against the wall, the bottom line is that they can't practically keep them all up to date. Again, an informed public wouldn't buy them, but buy them they do. And the carriers are as much at fault for that as anyone...
Re: (Score:3)
The whole "we can update your device" bit is a scam
And yet there are plenty of devices out there which the updates provide features and fix bugs. You cherry pick the bad ones.
I too have a high end camera. It has received 3 firmware updates. One a compatibility bugfix, One an improvement in image quality bugfix (removed banding in extreme scenarios), and one major upgrade which removed a laundry list of bugs, added features to several accessories including an entire HTTP server in the camera, as well as support for new memory cards larger than 128GB. My chea
Re:Solution: Buy legislators. All of them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Kidding aside, with such poor customer experience, you would now advise your family and friends (or worse, post reviews online) to avoid said manufacturer, thus hurting future sales. If it is within the return period, you may even take advantage of this, thus they have 0 net sale from you. The aftersales of the product is very much tied to the future sale of either the same product (word of mouth, reviews, etc.) or a newer model of the product (refresh, old one broke due to *ahem* "accident", etc.). Such logic seems to not have entered the PHBs of these companies.
Agreed, and that's exactly what I do regarding HP. I bought a high-end OfficeJet several years ago that worked great for a while. Until I installed one of those updates over the net. That update made it stop printing with either generic or refilled ink cartridges. It would only print with "genuinely expensive HP ink". I even complained to the BBB. HP's response was to send me a free ink cartridge, which made the BBB happy, but not me.
I ended up donating the printer and the ink cartridges to a local charity, got a tax write-off for the donation, and bought an Epson printer. The Epson works great with refilled ink cartridges.
I will never buy another HP product again, and I encourage others to do the same.
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...until it clogs up and refuses to print until you waste half a set of cartridges on cleaning cycles. Even that might not get it running right.
Re:Updates (Score:4, Insightful)
That would work too, if the phones were running the google version of android in the first place...
Most of them are running hacked up versions made by either the carriers or the handset vendors, if you replaced them with stock google code they simply wouldn't boot at all in most cases. The same is true with any other platform, it's just a far less common scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
my Note 4 turns off at 27% battery remainining now
That might be a coincidence though. As batteries age it gets harder to judge the capacity. My Nexus 4 has started being really whacky. Actually there's an interesting thing where the GSM chip appears to cut out at a higher voltage than the main phone, so I get a glimpse of the battery voltage when the cell connection dies. That used to happen reliably at 3%. These days it happens anywhere between 1% and 25%.
It's still a perfectly servicable phone and GSM rad
Re: (Score:2)
The Nexus 5 had better support than any non-Nexus Android phone out there. And still have, since security updates are still provided monthly.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly: Cricket. Not sure what country the author of that article is in. For US customers, it's the carriers not the OEMs who are the roadblocks to updates.
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