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Comment by castell | Hacker News Reader

Samsung smartphone/tablet hardware is fine, but their Android "support" is a joke. No Android updates after a few weeks. Samsung still sells some Android 2.3.x and 4.1.x devices and most of their devices never received the 2.3->4 and 4->5 update. Some of their flagship devices are also a bit overpriced. They used to offer a replaceable battery and an SD-card slot, but its gone in their latest flagship S6 Edge as well.

Many early Samsung smartphone/tablet customers turn away after their experiences. LG, HTC, Sony, Lenovo and many little known Chinese products are cheaper and usually better nowadays.

Samsung TVs already use Bada/Tizen OS, and Samsung announced that their S5 flagship phone would be released also with Tizen. The question is why Samsung hasn't switched to Tizen yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada

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> The question is why Samsung hasn't switched to Tizen yet?

This might be one of the reasons: http://what.thedailywtf.com/t/enlightened/8795

(hits Wikipedia) ... “The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) are a set of free and open source graphics libraries that grew out of the development of the Enlightenment window manager”

“...And did I mention EFL is the basis of all applications on Tizen?”

Oh dear.

One of the trolls on that page says that it's impossible that Evas is faster with software rendering than other window managers are with openGL accelleration.

this means none of them have used EFL for anything more than a Toy; Every E convert knows that Raster's Software renderer is an absolute beast in performance.

I have bought my two Samsung phones through Verizon because they have the best coverage in the mountains where I live.

Verizon slowly but surely seems to roll out updates.

Unless you have an unlocked phone, your carrier determines if/when updates happen, right?

I think it depends on the device. I'd wager that most carrier-branded handset variants are indeed set up to only allow updates pushed by the carrier but I'm not sure that applies to everything. I believe iOS updates can still be initiated by the user. I'm not experienced with iOS on Verizon so I don't know if they managed to screw that up too but as far as I know, Apple has held firm on that front.

I don't use Verizon but friends who do tend to complain that they are often stuck waiting for updates. Even when the unbranded version of a handset has updates available, there is no easy way to install them on a Verizon phone due to locked bootloaders and such. If the VZW variant has different hardware, then even a standard factory image won't do you any good since they will be built for the "everyone else" version.

I really do feel for people whose only choice is Verizon. At least with AT&T you can usually just buy the standard hardware and pop in your SIM to avoid carrier obstructionism. With VZW, they really get you by the short hairs.

If you have an iPhone, the carrier has nothing to do with your updates.

Every middleman slows the update process down. Nexus devices get the Android updates first, then unlocked phones and then telekom provider. Some phone manufactures are known to provide updates faster than others or at all, some provide it only for a few weeks. It's all your choice with Android.

If you want/need a very good signal quality, buy one made of mainly of plastic instead of metal material; or an external antenna. The brand doesn't matter that much.

I just got my 5.0.1 update for Verizon Samsung S4. 5.0 has been out for how long, I'm thankful I didn't get the original included memory leak

I believe I received it for my S4 (AT&T) about 3 weeks ago, and it's having trouble installing for whatever reason. I'm pretty peeved it took so long to get it and will probably switch back to Apple the next go around.

SD card slots on Android 4.4+ are next to useless anyway.

SD card slot works fine in Android 5.x, a similar experience as in Android 2.3. One can install apps there, one can put private files there, it even support per app-storage there. Sure some old apps may not work with the newer Android 5 APIs, but there are usually alternatives. What do you miss, what do I miss?

And it's far cheaper to insert a 128GB SD card than buying a phone with such storage capacity upfront. Also changing a SD card or upgrading one is possible too.

Replaceable sim-cards/sd-cards/battery/etc are good for the consumer.

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