Hacker News Reader

Comment by bergie | Hacker News Reader

Android in general has a quite bad version update track record, but that doesn't include the Nexus line of devices

Nexus One has just completely dropped support. Android's saving grace is that there is a community of programmers willing to support devices that are otherwise locked/unsupported. A lot like *nix in the early days. It's all grassroots from here on.

If only there was a way to distill that information to the less informed consumers.

Is there an official (by Google) upgrade to Android 4.1 for the Nexus One?

The real reason here is a technical limitation. The Nexus One and many other devices from that generation have very little ROM space. Typically <500MB. ICS+ takes anywhere from 350MB-400MB of that. So the user is left is left with hardly any space to install apps. It can fit less than 5 apps probably.

Even with custom ICS and JB roms this is a problem, but there people know what they are getting into before hand, and also for rooted devices, there's ext2sd which basically uses your sdcard to store user data.

Google fixed this with Nexus S and forwards. So we have to wait and see how long the Nexus S will be updated.

If you look at the track record, they treat the current generation Nexus very well, and older models less so. Forget about ICS, the Nexus One didn't get Gingerbread for over 4 months after it was released. It did, however, get Froyo almost instantly, just like the Galaxy Nexus recently got JB almost instantly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com