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Is Samsung Blocking Updates To Froyo?
jfruhlinger writes "One of the complaints about Android is its fragmentation; many different versions of the OS are out there in the wild, and often users are held back from upgrading by their hardware or their carrier. But now a disturbing rumor has it that Samsung is strong-arming T-Mobile to prevent an over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.2 (Froyo) for Samsung Vibrant owners. The reason? Samsung wants people to shell out for the new Vibrant 4G — which, other than the fact that it ships running Froyo, is largely identical to the Vibrant."
Reader CWmike contributes an informative link if you'd like to know which Android vendors are actually delivering timely upgrades.
Hows all that "open platform" "not locked to a walled garden" "no need to jailbreak" Android working out for all the people that rant and rave against the iPhone?
I want an OTA update for my Samsung Vibrant. It's a Galaxy S on 2.1 Android, and it's a nice bit of hardware. I don't really need the upgrade but I do wonder why they're not putting anything out OTA. They are dragging their heels on the Kies update. Well, even if it were on Kies, I wouldn't use that piece of junk. Oh, wait, they don't make it for the Mac. It's silly to have such an advanced phone, which can't update itself over the air like pretty much every other smartphone in the past few years can do.
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The good thing about Android is that it's open and anyone can add features, customizations, etc. to it.
The bad thing about Android is that the manufacturers and the carriers usually end up raping it and making it a worse experience.
The ugly part is that Google doesn't seem to care all that much and is perfectly willing to put up with this kind of crap.
Not to say this rumor is true, but this is why forced vendor dependence is a bad thing. I'm not sure if Samsung is doing it (and they aren't yet, as I understand it) but if Samsung was doing what Motorola was and signing the kernel, then such fixes and updates would be impossible to install.
As it stands, you can root a Samsung device and load whatever ROM you want on it. But beware, this is the sort of behavior that they want such lock down for. Not for your security, but to deliberately limit the lifespan of your device and make you buy a new one.
Customers should demand that the phone's come with documentation stating A) What upgrade rights the customer has, B) The minimum span for which the vendor promises to support the phone by issuing upgrades to the standard Android build or a variant, and C) In the event that the company cannot fulfill (B), for example, because that particular model sold poorly, or the company goes out of business, that the phones will be completely unlocked (except for the black box components that let you violate FCC regs) and third party vendors or OSS hackers can issue their own upgrades, at the customer's own risk. Oh, and include a revert to original state option in case an upgrade goes south.
These rules could probably use some fine tuning, but I believe that this will make purchasing decisions simpler and budgets more predictable. It will also establish a sense of trust and even loyalty with the vendors that follow this model. As it stands, very few phone makers or telcos have earned any trust whatsoever. We just have to guess who will screw us hardest-- and when the contestants are Microsoft, Sony, AT&T, Verizon, Apple, Samsung, that's not a fun game.
Smart phones are expensive, and they're taking the place of PCs in many areas. PC vendors don't restrict your ability to install an alternative OS. We should expect the same from phone vendors. The status quo encourages forced waste-- which is always profitable for a few scumbags, but it's bad for all other life on the planet, consumers included.
My tmobile vibrant runs just fine with froyo because I put it on there. It would be nice if it was an ota update but it works great all the same.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
It's bad enough the two worst cellphone carriers are making the iphone (AT&T) and android (T-Mobile) look bad... but let's not blame the manufacturers. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and others have done a great job of providing open upgradeable platforms... AND developing upgrades for them with hardware specific vendor modifications.
Blame AT&T and T-Mobile for sucking. Samsung is ok in my book.
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I really like it actually. GPS is spotty compared to iPhone, but other than that it is world's better (in my opinion). The OLED is gorgeous.
That said I will never purchase another Samsung device that needs updating. I was promised Froyo in September after purchasing in June. Still haven't gotten it. Sure I got my own Froyo update in December, but I expected an update and got shafted. I'd read bad reports about Samsung not updating in the past and thought "this time will be different... this is a flagship device." Nope.
I dislike the "this group messed up, so hate the whole company" attitude, so I would consider a TV or the like. But not a phone.
Call me naive, but it seems to me that a lot of these problems can be resolved by Google allowing (and release a application to do it) for any device to be flashed reliably to a stock Android [stable] release. Past and present.
Manufacturers don't want to update there fancy phone and custom UI to the latest? That's fine. But the user is still allowed to manually update themselves and lose the original features they bought into. Guess what -- those fancy features that brought them to your phone may prove to be optional and there's a much better chance they won't choose your hardware platform moving forward. This may be a big enough kick up the butt that the manufacturers need.
Samsung have done this since their first Android phone, the Galaxy i7500. Why do you continue buying Samsung phones when you know they will do this?
We're still working out which vendors are going to support their phones for the long run, like Apple does with their iPhone, and which ones are expecting you buy a new one every year, like Nokia. My expectation in 2011 is that if I spend £500 on a new phone, I expect to get software updates for as long as the hardware is viable, *especially* when the manufacturer isn't bearing the cost of building the software! If Samsung don't deny this rumour and confirm they'll be issuing minor Android updates, I don't see how they expect to compete against Apple, and every other Android vendor out there. The ridiculous, wasteful "fire and forget" model of smartphone development is long dead, and manufacturers that try it will fix it, or exit the market pretty quickly.
Even 8 years ago, I never understood why Nokia didn't try to sell their phones as long-term investments, and ship better software for their premium phones as they developed it, rather than trying to hawk us a new bit of plastic every 18 months.
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
I frequent XDA a lot and the warnings were clear. If you're not buying a Nexus device (Nexus One/Nexus S), you will most likely be left in the dark for an official upgrade path. The G1 and the original, slower Galaxy, for example, never received an official upgrade past 1.6. Personally, I don't think carriers/OEMs have a lot of demand from most of their consumer base to engineer upgrades. This news might gain much more attention since it's blatantly obvious that Samsung was gunning for obsoleting one of their flagship phones so quickly, but unless video calling really takes off (doesn't seem to have done so yet), it's not the biggest deal for many.
From a technical standpoint, it's completely irrelevant. Save for the upgraded modem and the front-facing camera, it's the original Vibrant. (They probably added more tricks in the hardware to make rooting harder, though.) Additionally, it's pretty trivial to add a front-facing camera to the current Vibrant and there is an unofficial carrier-engineered version of Froyo for it floating around on the Internet. For starters, it has Wifi Calling natively bundled into it. It's also somewhat faster. I flashed my Dad's Vibrant with it before I gave it to him as a Christmas gift and it works amazingly for him.
Just the mere existence of that ROM suggests that an update might be around the corner. The question, though, is how wide T-Mobile and Samsung is making that corner for people.
The real reason they are stonewalling on the 2.2 update for Vibrant is this: When they released the 2.2 update for the Vibrant in Canada, the update worked fine for a week or two, and then like clockwork bricked a huge percentage of the phones that updated. And when I say bricked, I'm not being liberal with that word, after a week or so running the Samsung 2.2 update, the SD card would become corrupt, and recovery mode would be unable to format it. My wife and I both have Vibrants, and it happened to them both one day apart. Samsung has been silent on the matter. Not surprising they'd avoid moving sending the 2.2 update out to US Vibrant owners, and also not surprising that they're refusing to explain why. Bell at least is fixing them, but lots of people on the XDA forum are saying their "repaired" phones are bricking again in short order.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The Samsung Intercept, at least the one distributed by Virgin Mobile, is going to the the Froyo update soon. So any insinuation that Samsung blocks all android updates is false.
http://twitter.com/virginmobileus/status/24854959556136961#
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
This "entitlement" is because we realize that these phones are actually computers running largely general purpose software, and there are security vulnerabilities that need patched. This is like Gateway, Dell, or eMachines colluding with Comcast to block WindowsXP security update requests to update.microsoft.com so that you'll buy a new computer when your XP box gets owned.
It's gone to hell because quality control isn't a requirement anymore in this wonderful new age where everything has updatable operating systems and drivers.
Now they can ship it out "good enough" and make everyone who buys it at the beginning be their bug testers. Then release a firmware patch several months later to fix it. Rinse and repeat until the bugs are all gone or the company has milked all the money they can out of sales and moved on to hyping the newest model.
Back when this wasn't possible they had to do quality testing, because a product that made it to market with a major bug could require an expensive recall to fix.