> It's not a fault of Android per-se
And that's pretty much the answer...
BTW, I've found Samsung to be decent with updates as well.
And that's pretty much the answer...
BTW, I've found Samsung to be decent with updates as well.
Not really. Android got big because OEMs can do as they like with it. And what OEMs like doing, apparently, is not updating the OS on their device. An Android OS that, from the start, controlled OEMs in some way (by e.g. forcing them to ship updates on a certain schedule) would likely not have become a viable contender in the market.
It's not the fault of Android that OEMs are stupid, but Android was created specifically to cater to OEMs and their stupidity. Android's existence is itself the problem.
(It'd be great if their licensing model up until now was just a bootstrapping strategy, though, and they began requiring things of their OEMs.)
To a certain degree, they're forced to either be open as they are now, or sell devices. Given absurd government rulings, forcing stock Android on OEMs would probably bring an antitrust suit against them.
I'm not sure... From the start, Android was the only viable contender for OEMs. Their choices were create their own OS (good luck catching up to iOS) or take Android with whatever restrictions it had.
As we saw, the established companies wasted years and billions trying to play their same games with customer neglect, pointless restrictions and marketing deals, etc. Android became big precisely because Google was desperate to get into the market and agreed to all of it.
Thank XDA for CM, because otherwise I'd have to get a new phone not for hardware but because the software is unsupported.
Next phone I buy will be a Nexus for this reason.
Just like the Motorola before it, and the Sony before that, and the HTC before that. It's getting tiresome.
My S3 is stuck with 4.3