It’s time to start paying for Android updates
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Imagine a world where you had to buy a new desktop because the vendor provided you with Windows XP service pack 1 but decided the machine would no longer be supported? That situation does not exist, thankfully, because PC vendors never had the nerve to lock owners out of their own property.
The cell phone industry still thinks they should control every little interaction on the handset, forcing their bloated UI overlays, restricting features, and nickel and diming customers. I refuse to entertain the notion I should be giving these people more money for the sole purpose of formalizing their control my property.
I run ICS on a Samsung Galaxy S. Samsung officially will not support it because their resource intensive "improvement" called TouchWiz can't run on the older handset when ported to ICS. Meanwhile some kid, for free with spare time, managed to build a fully functional ICS version I run without issue.
At this point in time, locked bootloaders only exist to keep customers on the hardware upgrade treadmill. It needs to stop.
The overhead of these phone manufactures comes from their horrible customizations and differentiation practices. I find the idea of paying $10 for the privilege of updating the OS just so I can get the new version of Sense, or TouchWiz, or MotoBlur, or whatever Sony runs now repugnant. I think this idea pushes the market in the wrong direction.
The fact that volunteers create functional ICS installations shows that it doesn't take time or money to get ICS itself running. The vendors themselves add cost by leaving their taint on every interaction I have on the phone.
And the article itself says "OEMs that want to engage in paid updates should have a bootloader unlock solution for users that want to update on their own." with no reasoning at all besides it would make the writer feel warm and fuzzy.
????. I'm certain it does take both time and money. The volunteers are spending time on it.
The volunteer worked a non-zero amount of time. Thanks for pointing it out! I'll make sure to carefully guard my language in the future for fear of being unclear.
Well, they don't have much to differentiate do they? They all get the same Android, the hardware is pretty much the same between classes of phones (the customer doesn't really care it's a Tegra 3 or a S4) and there are not too many ways you can tinker with the hardware design so they have to add their own interface to make it different.
I don't think anyone chooses carriers based on the phone's bloatware (although maybe on the lack thereof), so I don't see why they need to differentiate at all.
They are playing both sides of the coin by locking things down.
Their headlines never say the true intent of their article, and their article never comes to the conclusion that has been set up through the arguments. There is extreme bias and non sequiturs riddling the entire site.
It's a difficult read because of the logic errors, and everytime an article is posted from Extreme Tech, it seems everyone comes away with a different opinion of what was really meant. This isn't creative literature class. This is not a good way to run a website.
What Google has done is for ICS+ phones they must contain Android's stock themes so applications developed against said theme will look consistent on every device. The manufacturer can still have their own themes, and developers can detect if they exist and use them, but the stock theme must be available.
As a long time devotee and early-adopting "evangelist" (especially Maps, Gmail/Apps, Picasa, and eventually Android) it seems we are witnessing Google's decent into terminal failure to grasp the concept, and value, of "customer"...
Apple provides updates to old phones because it has a strong financial incentive to do so: They don't just sell phones, they also operate an app marketplace for those phones, and they get a cut of the sale price of every app sold through that marketplace. So they want to keep all their users buying apps, even the ones with old phones. Part of doing that is giving existing users a reason to stay checked-in - and pushing new features to users of old phones through OS updates allows them to do that. They also want to have as much "awesomeness" in the app store as they can get, and one way they can facilitate that is by minimizing the hurdles that might prevent developers from using all the latest and greatest features in their APIs. On that front, the biggest hurdle imaginable would be if only a minority of the platform's users had the ability to run apps that depend on the latest API. So Apple really, really wants to keep old iPhones up to date as long as they can, not out of some sense of corporate altruism, but because doing this maximizes app store profits for them.
On Android, on the other hand, there is absolutely none of that. The only time Android OEMs see any money is when you buy a new phone. They don't care if you can run ICS+-only apps, because they don't see money from the app store. They don't care if you keep buying new apps, because they don't see any money from the app store. They don't even particularly care if you prematurely decide your phone is janky and outdated and you need a new one on account of no OS updates, because. . . oh wait, they do care there. They want that to happen, because the only time they see money is when your current phone gets tossed in the dustbin.
Meanwhile, as the article points out, providing updates to old phones is quite an expensive process. Especially if you're doing anything beyond pushing patches.
So. . . given that the incentive structure built into the Androidverse serves to heavily disincentivize OEMs from providing iPhone-style support, the question remains: Why on earth, then, should they?
The situation you describe is basically that the OEMs didn't get a good deal from their OS provider and are choosing to pass the costs on to their customers in terms of poorer after sales service instead of higher up-front costs.
As for Apple, they clearly don't do anything out of altruism, but they seem to try to have deliberately structured to maximize customer satisfaction over time so as to justify higher margins.
With no suggestion of altruism or the like, it is simply good business in most markets to invest in the satisfaction of your customers. Since they were brought up, Apple is an excellent HIGHLY PROFITABLE example of this correlation to the bottom line -- possibly the poster child of the foreseeable future. There are other good examples to be found, very likely in the form of far smaller enterprises in your own area.
Pleasing your new and incumbent user-base is certainly no guarantee of success, but can anyone produce data that supports the idea that it would be net loss in the long run, all things considered? I mean, if the definition of a business is intent to profit, doesn't it stand to reason that the longer you operate, the more profits you generate? (In the most generalized sense, not discounting the possibly complex specificities of a large operation nor the vagaries of human behavior and progress...)
Given how Android's been doing in terms of phone market share, I don't think Android OEMs need to be too terribly worried that failing to provide updates is seriously affecting their long-term viability. At least not for the moment. These kinds of complaints mostly only crop up among HN geeks like us; the bulk of the market at large doesn't know about, doesn't understand, or doesn't care about the issue.
On the other hand, paying for the development resources it would take to supply those kinds of updates would force an OEM to raise their prices. For reasons related to the above, It's reasonable to surmise that would be a suicidal move for any Android OEM. None of them are fueled by customers who love that company's product so much that they'd be willing to pay a premium price for it. On the contrary, the Android market is characterized by heavy price competition and razor-thin margins. It's like the PC market of 10 years ago: There's simply no mercy to spare for a company that blows any significant money on happy-warm-fuzzy customer support.
The purportedly high cost of OEM development would be mismanagement at best and is simply an informal fallacy at worst.
Your rebuttal supports my statements, as captured by this statement: "It's like the PC market of 10 years ago..." Pray tell, which players remain from that era and, of those, which are not on the brink of insolvency?
Regardless, you misinterpret me. When I said warm fuzzies, I meant companies doing things just to be nice to customers, regardless of whether there's reason to believe it will draw immediate profit. These things can't be reasonably expected to affect revenues for companies that don't have very strong brands (say, Apple) simply because they're things that people generally aren't thinking about while they're in the store. People in general are barely aware of HTC as an actual entity, so they have a hard time having any sort of emotional reaction to it, positive or negative.
Pray tell, which players remain from that era and, of those, which are not on the brink of insolvency?
Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba. . . and they're all doing fine. I just double-checked on their rough financials, and all but HP had healthy increasing revenue and profit over the past year. HP's profits are down, but still deep in the black.
And while we can agree that most people are largely brand agnostic in a number of tech-related purchases, sentiment still plays a role, even if it isn't as explicitly expressed in the way a typical Hacker News reader might.
So they issue iOS 5 to every supported device and, lo and behold, iCloud has 80 million users overnight. It doesn't matter that most people think iCloud is useless, what matters is they frictionlessly transitioned 80 million people onto their servers. Now that they have those users they can figure what to do with it.
I don't believe Apple is doing this out of altruism for users or developers. I think they are honestly going after Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, et al. at the same time. And the most effective way to do that is to have...80 million users on day one.
The original iphone and the iphone 3G stopped receiving updates 3 years after release[1]. It's important to note, though, that in both cases the update cycle continued for a significant amount of time after the devices were no longer available in stores.
The original iPhone received its last update 1 year and 6 months after the device was discontinued: iOS 3.1.3 was released February 2, 2010 while the original iPhone was discontinued July 11, 2008.[2][3]
The iPhone 3G received its last update 5 months and 18 days after being discontinued. In this case, given that it had the same specs as the original iPhone except for the 3G modem, I think that iOS was rapidly becoming too resource intensive to continue updating for this device, considering that by 2010 the majority of the hardware was already 3 years old. That said, iOS 4.2.1 was released November 22, 2010, and the 3G was discontinued as of June 4, 2010.[2][3]
Contrast this to Android where some flagship phones don't even receive security updates after even a year (the chart in my references only includes notable Android devices, and ignores cheaper ones that go after the free w/ contract market etc.)
Paying for updates is not the solution. Unfortunately, unless Google or consumers grab the vendors by the balls, the only thing that I honestly think will do anything at all about this situation is a rather nasty worm that manages to do some serious damage to devices that haven't gotten timely updates. I don't want to see that happen, it would really hurt Android's reputation in the eyes of those who won't understand that the HW vendor is to blame for the problem, not Android the OS.
[1] Chart of device updates published some time ago: http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan...
[2] iPhone discontinuation dates and final iOS version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices#iPhone
[3] Release dates of iOS versions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
I think it's more because they're still actively selling the 3GS, as their $0 entry-level iPhone.
Isn’t it beautiful when a company’s self-interests are aligned with their customer’s?
They get users and money, I get an updated OS and new features on my old phone. Everybody wins!
(iCloud useless? you might think that documents on iCloud is useless, but iCloud is also the brand name for email service, contacts, calendar, photos sync and automated daily backups. seems hardly useless to me.)
"If it charged just $10 for access to the update, that would be $150 million if only half of all users wanted an official update."
Few would pay for an update. Especially when the phone is likely to have even more bloatware added each update. Those who would want the update would install a custom rom, especially if it was unlocked by default. The only incentive to upgrade is when someone can't run the next big game.
More importantly, that new handset locks the customer into a new contract. That's the priority. Hopefully some egghead executive will realize that offering software updates, replacing batteries, and reducing monthly fees for loyal customers can earn them even more money.
Along a similar thought, I have very little desire to pay for Android software because developers have a habit of screwing their customers. I have purchased games with zero permissions to avoid adware in the past, only to have updates add a plethora of unwanted and unneeded security permissions.
Paid apps should not be allowed to add security permissions without giving the option for refunds and/or an honest Google code review.
The most effective thing Google can realistically do is ship desirable Motorola phones that get updated to the latest Android version the day of release.
I don't think that paying for updates is going to help matters - that's just another good argument to get an iPhone. Instead, I think Google has to start giving device manufacturers a cut of the Android app store revenue. Others here have pointed out that handset makers have no incentive to keep their customers using the latest version of Android. If they wanted to make sure that their customers were still buying Android apps, keeping them on an up-to-date version of Android would be more important.
It shouldn't be so hard; the PC industry got this mostly right decades ago.
The 3GS which was originally released with iOS 3 almost 3 years ago is still able to update to the most current iOS 5.1 for free.
Why? Because, time and time and time again, they manage to do in 2 months what it takes carriers/manufacturers 8 months (or really, never) to do: update the software on my Android phone to the latest release.
I kept both my Droid and Fascinate for a good 6-months or more extra because I was able to load CyanogenMod on it. They both were on higher versions of Android when I decommisioned them than they will ever see official builds for.
Give me an unlocked bootloader, follow the terms of the GPL and I'm happy. For regular users, if you want fast updates, buy Nexus or buy Apple. I'm a big Android guy, but honestly, if you want fast updates and the Galaxy Nexus isn't available for your carrier, and you're not willing to install CyanogenMod... just buy an iPhone.