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Comment by recoiledsnake | Hacker News Reader

> In other cases that upgrade will require significant engineering investments—time and money—on the part of the handset maker and the carrier. They might decide to spend the money and deliver the update, six months later. Or they might decide that the investment isn't worth it.

It's a double whammy. The OEMs need to spend the money for the update and the customer will be disincentivized to buy the newest hardware.

Not supplying ICS for the Galaxy S will help the sales of S II and the Galaxy Nexus.

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It seems like the perfect opportunity for a hardware vendor to separate themselves from the crowd.

"Buy our hardware and be assured software updates for 2 years."

So, buy from Apple?

From my own experience with this, I bought a Samsung Moment a couple weeks after it launched and was abandoned with about 17 months left on my contract (with some severe bugs that were never resolved while I had it). I did get an official update to 2.1, but it was very late and that was the last update it ever received while I owned it.

Sure, I wasn't an eligible purchaser for their next immediate phone release, but their utterly terrible support of my product ensured that I'll never be a future customer of Samsung, for any of their product divisions and severely tarnished my impression of Android in general. All Android manufacturers do equally bad jobs at supporting their products with only a couple of products as exceptions (even "big release" phones like the original Motorola Droid got abandoned before their earliest contracts ended, late buyers are really screwed), so I'm not too keen on rolling the dice on any future Android products either.

Dug up this link: http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan...

It doesn't contain any new-ish phones, but for phones it does have on the list that were released less than 24 months ago (which would still be under contract right now), none of them will be getting updated to ICS via their manufacturer. The majority stopped receiving updates less than 12 months from their initial release.

I was using my OG Droid on a regular basis until I got a Galaxy Nexus. I was running the latest Gingerbread and a super-tuned fast kernel from http://www.peteralfonso.com/ on it. When the manufacturers drop the ball, the community jumps on it. Far better than an iPhone of similar vintage (the OG Droid came out in late 2009.)

I'm not seeing how your solution is "far better" considering that the "iPhone of similar vintage" is the iPhone 3GS (released June 2009) which still continues to receive updates.

If updates were all people cared about, they would've all switched to iPhone from a while ago. Not having many updates now is a pain, but it doesn't necessarily mean people will want to switch to iPhone because of it.

> Not supplying ICS for the Galaxy S will help the sales of S II and the Galaxy Nexus.

Or will it help the sales of Xperias, Sensations, RAZRs, etc.?

I think bad support for the Galaxy S will, in the long run, decrease sales of future devices from Samsung.

If customers are interested in long supported devices, then the companies who provide them will come out on top. And if customers don't care about updates, then they won't buy a new device just because it has a newer version.

There are already some device vendors who provide good support: Google and Apple. Others, like Sony and Asus, seem to be willing to improve their reputation.

Samsung itself has already improved a lot since 2010. It's disappointing that the Galaxy S is abandoned now, but it already got a great deal more support than Samsung's 2009 lineup.

Also, don't forget that Motorola is going to be part of Google soon. For obvious reasons, future devices from Motorola will run AOSP-Android and get Android updates for as long as possible.

tl;dr if customers want long term software support for their devices, someone will give it to them. No matter what software platform the software is based on.

Also, don't forget that Motorola is going to be part of Google soon. For obvious reasons, future devices from Motorola will run AOSP-Android and get Android updates for as long as possible.

Google keeps saying it's going to be "Moto as usual"; let's hope that was wrong.

Google does not need to give Motorola any unfair advantage over competitors.

Fewer devices, stock Android, longer support. Nothing that Samsung or HTC couldn't do as well if they wanted to.

Can't the same be said for Samsung and the Focus (since they are selling the Focus S)? Why did they provide that upgrade promptly?

Because Microsoft forced them to. And being the sole laggard when every other OEM updates all the generation one WP7 devices to Mango isn't going to reflect well on them at all. Not to mention that they don't need to update things like Touchwiz since Microsoft doesn't not allow deep customization to the OS by the OEMs.

Right, but this article claims that the problem is that "Android is too free" and that these companies don't have incentives to update. But the former is not true; Google has a stick just like Microsoft has a stick. It's a different stick, but it's a stick. They just choose not to use it. To me the blame is placed solely on Google who apparently is winning too strongly to care about this particular wrinkle.

> But the former is not true; Google has a stick just like Microsoft has a stick. It's a different stick, but it's a stick. They just choose not to use it.

What stick does Google have?

Manufacturers cannot ship a device containing Google's proprietary IPs (the Android Market client, Google Talk, GMail, Maps, Navigation, and the official YouTube client) if the device doesn't meet certain compatibility standards[1].

[1] http://source.android.com/compatibility/overview.html

Realistically, someone with 12-18 months left on their contract is not going to buy a new phone anyway.

In Canada, the standard contract length is 3 years with a hardware upgrade after 2. I'm in the position now where I'm looking to replace the 3gs I got 2 years ago, and I'll definitely be getting a new phone in the next few weeks.

Also, keep in mind that people lose/break phones all the time, or get rid of their old one because it annoys them. Lack of updates could be a significant factor in making a decision to go with the same manufacturer.

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