Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Android Orphans: a Sad History of Platform Abandonment

Posted by timothy on from the %&$%#-att-and-their-refusal-to-do-otr-updates dept.

MBCook writes "After seeing the announcement that Nexus One users won't get ICS, Michael Degusta made a chart to show how current the OS version on Android phones was over time... and the results are not encouraging."

4 of 770 comments (clear)

  1. How about warranty support? by hawguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't care about having the latest/greatest Android OS, but I wish the carriers were required to provide warranty support for the full 2 year term of your contract.

    My droid 1 stopped working 19 months into my contract. I had bought the WPP wireless protection plan and figured it would have me covered, but when I called Verizon, they said that it only covered accidental damage and that I wouldn't be covered. They did offer to sell me a refurb phone for $150 or something like that, and offered me an early upgrade with a new 2 year contract term. I thought about "accidentally" dropping the phone into the sink and then making a damage claim with WPP, but I found a used one on eBay for a bit less than the WPP deductable.

    If the carriers are going to lock me into a 2 year contract that I can't cancel, why aren't they required to make sure that the equipment they sold me works throughout the entire contract?

    At the very least, carriers should be required to let me drop the voice/data contract and pay only the phone subsidy ($15 - $20/mo?) if I want to end the contract.

  2. Re:Buy Apple by GauteL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is a fair point about the walled garden of the Apple ecosystem, but I'm willing to bet that at least 90% of all Android phone users will never install an App from outside the Android marketplace and will never, ever consider installing CyanogenMod or even know what it is.

  3. Re:what's the obsession with the latest version by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The iPhone 3G did get software updates, up to the latest version of 4, but it really is just not capable of running iOS5 (it was barely capable of running iOS4)

  4. Re:Like PC's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is sad, but this is true.

    If you watch Triumph of the Nerds, you'll have an idea, why PCs are so open: because IBM tried to rush the product out of the door and open interface and interchangeable parts from different manufactures was their only option. IIRC, Larry Ellison calls this decision to basically open everything "the huge business mistake" in this very movie too.