Why Android Upgrades Take So Long

adeelarshad82 writes "Last month Google released the Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' code base to the general public and manufacturers but it may be a while yet before it's actually rolled out to existing phones. In an attempt to explain why it takes so long, Motorola and Sony Ericsson shed some light on the process. Motorola described the long testing process involved in getting the new code out there, whereas Sony focused on explaining the time-consuming certification process."

Comments

Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll get fed up waiting and buy a new phone instead.

Great phone, the Fascinate, just can't stand the software they stunk it up with.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[colsandurz45]

Which I was I bought my phone outright, it's an N900 though.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[tripleevenfall]

Some of the same reasons they don't want you upgrading the OS yourself. They don't want you to get the latest features without paying them a big pile of money or extending your contract.

I'm sure they also have to make sure the latest version is festooned with crapware before they unleash it on the public.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

Great phone, the Fascinate, just can't stand the software they stunk it up with.

It's weird that you think the software and the phone are two different things - the software on a smartphone is more the phone than the hardware. I wouldn't put up with a phone with bad software, hoping that it would get better with a software update. If someone sells a phone with bad software they're the last company I'd expect to provide good software for it in the future. They shipped a bad product, buy from a different company.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Troed]

You're welcome.

http://unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com/

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone followed your advice Sony would be long gone.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Miamicanes]

Buying your own phone doesn't matter with Verizon or Sprint. Non-Sprint phones can never be activated under a Sprint account (they can roam, but never be the phone for a real Sprint account). Verizon will let you do it if you twist their arm and escalate it high enough (possibly due to a consent decree inherited from AT&T years ago), but they won't actually *help* you, and you'll never get EVDO to work, only 1xRTT due to radio firmware funkiness unique to Verizon. There's no actual engineering reason why it HAS to be this way (it's purely a matter of software and business process; the hardware is identical), but unfortunately, that's the way it is.

In theory you could buy an unsubsidized phone for AT&T or T-Mobile, but in most cases you'd only be able to use GPRS and EDGE on T-Mobile (most foreign phones can't do 1700/2100 HSPA+), and I'm pretty sure most imported phones can't do HSUPA on AT&T (and often, the only models that can do 850MHz UMTS are the ones intended for Australia, which are so expensive when imported to the US that you could almost buy a Verizon phone and pay for the service for two years for what you'd pay for the imported phone alone).

The unfortunate truth is that America's mobile phone market is as structurally fragmented and messed up as Japan's, and only slightly more likely to untangle itself over the next 25 years into something resembling tortured interoperability.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason we think of the software separately from the hardware is that many Android users replace the software. In my case, when I got my Fascinate, the first thing I did is take it home and root it. Within a week or two, I was running custom software. I've now had the phone for over a year, and it spent very little of that time running the software provided by Verizon.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here. The software wasn't terrible, it just had parts that I decided to live with at first, then as everyone else upgraded around me, became more of the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. Stuff like lots of startup lag. And Bing as the search provider. I eventually flashed it to cyanogenmod, though the process for doing that was really quite painful compared to other phones (Samsung puts a really weird filesystem on that phone that had to be dealt with first).

So yeah with a little work, the hardware and software are separate. Just not anything I'm looking forward to doing again.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[X0563511]

...I eventually flashed it ... a really weird filesystem on that phone that had to be dealt with first...

Then you weren't flashing it, you were just dumping an archive into a filesystem.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Belial6]

I have purchased 5 unsubsidized phones for use on my families T-Mobile phone plane over the last 2 years.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Miamicanes]

And how many of them were NOT T-mobile branded, but nevertheless capable of HSPA+?

The only non-Tmobile-branded phones I'm aware of that are capable being coaxed into doing 1700/2100 plain-vanilla (non-HSPA+) UMTS at all are Samsung's GSM Galaxy-S phones (AT&T Captivate & international i9000). I'm sure there are a few others, but they're rare. Likewise, most foreign phones can now limp along and do 1900MHz plain-vanilla UMTS on AT&T, but very few that can also do 850MHz UMTS. I don't think there are ANY non-AT&T-branded phones that can do HSUPA on AT&T.

As a practical matter, if you care about getting the fastest data speeds possible, America's two nominally-GSM networks are almost as de-facto proprietary as Sprint and Verizon. And the tragic punchline is that when AT&T, Verizon, and (now) Sprint roll out LTE, they're going to be equally incompatible with each other and everyone else on earth despite LTE nominally being a global standard.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[WiiVault]

Why do I bother responding to an AC? But the GP was pretty much right on, and you said absolutely nothing of value to contradict him. Congrats.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[WiiVault]

Ok... but do they do TMo's 3G or 4G? A (very) few do, but I think for the vast majority of the phones he is right on. At least Tmo gives a slight (but unreasonably IMHO) discount when you bring your own hardware. Better than can be said for the rest of them.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[WiiVault]

With Sony going all in and buying out the Ericsson side of the company do you think that will continue in new models in the future? I'm pretty sure Sony weren't the ones pushing the consistent openness that that Sony-Ericsson phones have had historically.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[shutdown -p now]

The only non-Tmobile-branded phones I'm aware of that are capable being coaxed into doing 1700/2100 plain-vanilla (non-HSPA+) UMTS at all are Samsung's GSM Galaxy-S phones (AT&T Captivate & international i9000). I'm sure there are a few others, but they're rare.

Galaxy S2 doesn't do it on T-Mobile, unfortunately. But Galaxy Nexus does (yay! I can finally switch!).

I don't think there are ANY non-AT&T-branded phones that can do HSUPA on AT&T.

I'm not sure whether this is the same as HSPA+ or not - it's all so horribly convoluted - but SGS2 does H+ on AT&T.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Michael Wardle]

...the only models that can do 850MHz UMTS are the ones intended for Australia

Even then, many Australian phones do 850 MHz and 2100 MHz, but AT&T uses 850 and 1900, so the phone won't work everywhere.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Idbar]

I know HTC provides that tool as well. Why Samsung doesn't? Or is there one of those websites for samsung as well?

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Movi]

I believe that's because Samsung doesn't lock it's software at all. You only need Odin and the flash files to change your software. At least this is true for GSM models of SGS and SGS2.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[jonwil]

The Nokia N900 supports the T-Mobile frequency bands and it supports HSDPA and HSUPA and its the most open 3G phone there is.

The N9 also supports 1700/2100, as does the Galaxy Nexus and a number of more recent Nokia Symbian phones.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[thegarbz]

Samsung have made zero attempt to lock down the system (which is why I buy their phones). Firmware for all variants of all Samsung phones released around the world are available at www.samfirmware.com. I remember when Gingerbread first came out of the Galaxy S it came out in the Netherlands. I flashed that firmware over my phone without problems. The carriers in Australia released their copies some SIX MONTHS LATER.

The XDA-Dev page should give you a good indication of what Samsung phones are capable of and requires nothing more than downloading one of the two flashing utilities for Samsung phones. Personally I run a beta of IceCream Sandwich on my Galaxy S.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[cynyr]

T-mobile will sell you just about any phone they have without a contract. You can then use the very sneaky loophole of calling them and telling them that you are going out of the country, they will try and sell you the international plan, decline saying you are only going out for a few days and you don't expect to go often and would just like to buy a pre-paid sim when you get there. They should give you the unlock code for your phone.

Also T-Mobile is one of the few where the monthly payment is less when you buy the phone outright.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[thsths]

Which shows that they are lying - because a new phone should require a lot more integration work and testing than an upgrade for an existing phone. It is just a question of priorities.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[dave87656]

Non-Sprint phones can never be activated under a Sprint account (they can roam, but never be the phone for a real Sprint account).

That's one of the things I love about living in Germany. You can use your phone (if you own it) on any network. You just put your card in it. They have pre-paid deals with subsidized phones which you can only use on the network that sold it to you but you could always take your own phone, put your sim card in it and use it on that network that the card is for.

There are more options and there is more competition in Europe for cell phones than in the states.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[WiiVault]

Thanks for giving us that info. Quite useful. To set the record straight I wasn't dismissing the AC for his opinion- just the lack of evidence. You by comparison enhanced the discussion with verifiable information. Thanks. As a side note, T-mo being the only US carrier that offers a discount for bringing your own phone- or apparently buying it unlocked- is great. That's above what we expect as US mobile consumers However it isn't as much as I think it should be. Still, I can't help but be glad that they are pushing the freedom agenda even in a minimal way.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

They ARE two different things. I've run no less than 15 different software roms on my fascinate, from bone stock, to de-bloated / de-binged stock to vanilla android roms compiled from source. I was trying Gingerbread before the Verizon/Samsung froyo was even released. There are so many roms out there that you can pretty much find exactly what you want.
That being said, it's a shame the OEMs try to make you feel like a criminal for doing so. I think they could really cut development times for themselves by being quicker out of the gate with source code, and leveraging the dev community as innovators and beta testers. There are a lot of dedicated Devs that are out there doing great things, but they could do even more if they didn't have to try to back engineer all the bits that the OEMs are keeping close to the vest.
Samsung seems to be coming around. They now have one of the Cyanogenmod developers on the payroll, and just released their OTA gingerbread update, not fast, but improved over the lag time for froyo.
Personally I'm very excited over the future of android and smartphones. You just have to remember that we've just come out of the beta phases with android and the whole open source OS on a phone concept. Companies are still re-writing business plans and trying to figure out how to best make this work. I really think that the winners will be the ones who are more open and leverage the free development and testing done by the developer communities, and that will make their customers the real winners.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you're talking about, you know that right? Perhaps you think that trolling like this is funny, but personally I find it quite annoying.

Re:Verizon's rationale

[Anonymous Coward]

OPEN SPECS or even better OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS would be a good way speed the upgrades.

Not necessarily every brand, but if any begins with OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS they will win a good share in the market, being probably always the first ones in having ROMs.

As independent ROMS are not for the big share of the population, from the independent ROMs work the carriers and the main brand will make their own versions with their bundles and the crap they would want and the free users would have their free ROMs, a win win.

People use normally the preinstalled OS, let the nerds and or geeks to be free - this goes too for any SOPA or alike law -

Re:Verizon's rationale

[ok2phone]

I like Android phones,less price good quality and features, http://www.ok2phone.com/3g-phones-h7300.html

Hardly surprising

[gTsiros]

when you have a slew of devices, carriers, api versions, applications etcetc and considering android has become a really complicated deal

frankly, i think updates are *not* talking that long.

(16GB to compile ICS? jesus fuck why?)

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

(16GB to compile ICS? jesus fuck why?)

16GB recommended, not required, and it's because they're using memory-intensive optimization flags set.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, how many other OSes have YOU compiled?

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux, and quite often.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

A kernel does not an operating system make.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Sir_Sri]

And this is like a windows 8 developer preview going out, sure all the basic stuff is there, but to get it to actually work properly with anything with all the parts requires a fair bit of effort. No support for micro sd cards? (or the wrong type of support or whatever) need to fix that. Uses 35 more MB of ram than the previous version? that might break something important.

And whatever is wrong you have to figure out how to fix, which can take a lot of time, especially if the upgrade process breaks something, but you're not sure what initially. I'm sure there's a lot of back and forth between google devs and 3rd party devs trying to figure out wtf is going on.

If the xda developers had fully working ICS builds for major platforms out already I'd be a bit more critical. They don't. They have ICS builds, but a lot of times wireless doesn't work, phone calls don't work, the memory card doesn't work, the camera doesn't work or various other parts don't work. Diagnosing and writing drivers for all of those parts isn't trivial, and while I'd expect the actual companies to be faster about it than XDA it's still not a trivial undertaking.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yoda, is that you?

Re:Hardly surprising

[rtkluttz]

It actually ISN'T that complicated on the carrier side where the real delays come from, they just make it that way. When all the DRM and bloatware and crapware and bandwidth throttlers and tethering blockers and Carrier IQ loggers that are all designed to BREAK your phone or compromise its security go in, its damn difficult to make it run at all.

Look at cyanogenmod and how little time it takes them to get new versions out once they have all the roadblocks in the device figured out.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't. They have ICS builds, but a lot of times wireless doesn't work, phone calls don't work, the memory card doesn't work, the camera doesn't work or various other parts don't work. Diagnosing and writing drivers for all of those parts isn't trivial, and while I'd expect the actual companies to be faster about it than XDA it's still not a trivial undertaking.

It is understandable, that the xda community have problems to get the hardware running, without offical documents.
This problem has an easy fix. The manufacturer must demand from the companys that sell them the hardware pieces, that the drivers need to be open source and in the official kernel. So they have no problems with the hardware drivers.
I hope google will demand this for the next motorola devices.

Re:Hardly surprising

[rtkluttz]

You actually aren't giving a good comparison. XDA takes a long time because of the all the PURPOSEFUL breakages and blocks that are put in by the manufacturers and the carriers.

The manufacturers and carriers take a long time because they have some many artificial limiters and blocks and DRM that they all have to work together.

Google and XDA timeframes are understandable. Google is doing the REAL development work to make an Operating System. XDA is doing the best they can with what they have to work with with DRM and spyware riddled garbage.

The carriers and manufacturers spend their time screwing everything up on purpose.

Re:Hardly surprising

[INeededALogin]

Gentoo...

Re:Hardly surprising

[TeknoHog]

Geez, what an idiom.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually aren't giving a good comparison. XDA takes a long time because of the all the PURPOSEFUL breakages and blocks that are put in by the manufacturers and the carriers.

The manufacturers and carriers take a long time because they have some many artificial limiters and blocks and DRM that they all have to work together.

Google and XDA timeframes are understandable. Google is doing the REAL development work to make an Operating System. XDA is doing the best they can with what they have to work with with DRM and spyware riddled garbage.

The carriers and manufacturers spend their time screwing everything up on purpose.

Yeah, and it wouldn't surprise me much if part of what takes XDA so long is figuring out how to work around the obstacles Google engineers put in their way. I've had occasion to discuss the carrier and manufacturer "tweaks" with Android developers, and they really hate what gets done to their lovely OS.

I wouldn't put it beyond them to design bits of Android specifically with the goal of making it harder for carriers and manufacturers to screw it up.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Sir_Sri]

Yes but XDA should then be the maximum time it should take to release, and they aren't anywhere close yet. Given that everything they have thus far is basically garbage, well that's sort of my point. Getting all of this stuff working is hard.

It's not like google has done all the work. That's, to use my actual comparison of Window 8, like saying that MS does all the driver development. They do a driver, which hopefully won't cause it to explode, but that's about as far as it goes. Getting all the drivers written, for all of the different hardware parts, testing them all, integrating them all isn't exactly trivial. On a major product like the Galaxy S II (which I am most familiar with as that's our target platform for an ICS product next year) there are 2 majorly different CPU's it looks like a couple of different revisions of the same camera and flash, several different antennas etc. When samsung actually puts out a build, it needs to have all of those parts working correctly. And each one of them may have some random thing wrong with it, or that needs a special code path for (LTE, HSPA, different cpu's etc).

You're confusing getting into the guts of an existing firmware and software with trying to get a raw fresh from compilation ICS build on there. Assuming you can get it on at all (rooted phone + odin basically) well then there's only the in hardware module problems to deal with (which you dealt with to get custom roms on ages ago anyway)

XDA, in trying to get ICS working on something, is working with the same source google opened up to everyone. On some phones it's more difficult to get your own rom on, but once you have that problem solved, compiling ICS and sticking it on isn't that difficult, getting to actually do something useful is another matter entirely, which is my point. Right 'out of the box' so to speak ICS builds don't actually work worth shit, and that's the starting point for everyone. I'll be worried (though not really surprised) if XDA solves these problems before the actual companies. Until then, it's just guessing randomly as to how long development should take.

Re:Hardly surprising

[schnell]

all the DRM and bloatware and crapware and bandwidth throttlers and tethering blockers and Carrier IQ loggers ... all designed to BREAK your phone or compromise its security

This comment shows pretty clearly you have never actually been involved with cellular device/OS certification testing with a wireless carrier. Nobody likes carrier crapware, but certifying carrier-specific tweaks (whatever they may be) is a tiny tiny fraction of the actual cert process and why it takes so long.

First, carrier device and OS certifications doesn't even start until the device OEM thinks the updated software build is 100% done, which can take months. Secondly, the wireless carrier certifications take so long because the carriers are the ones that usually get the phone call when something doesn't work on the phone. Therefore they do a lot of network performance testing for the OS and its included key apps, UI/stability testing and (when the radio firmware is touched) RF testing to each new software build from the handset OEM. A single significant bug may end up costing a carrier tens of thousands of dollars or more in phone support employee time, so they are strongly motivated to test the crap out of the new software loads.

Comparing release cycles for CyanogenMod vs. carriers suggests of a lack of understanding of the different audiences and responsibilities. CM doesn't have to worry about fielding potentially hundreds of thousands of support phone calls and customer e-mails from paying customers who (rightly) expect their issues to be resolved promptly. But wireless carriers do, which is why the time delta is so large. It's like comparing the release cycle for some 3rd party MS Excel add-in software vs. the release cycle for a service pack to Office itself.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

It is 16GB recommended because they were launching 16 threads (1GB/thread) on a dual-processor Xeon quad-core machine with hyperthreading.

If you have a "lowly" quad-core you really only need 8GB.

Re:Hardly surprising

[hitmark]

Did anything meaningful come out of the olive branch that Samsung reached out to XDA?

Re:Hardly surprising

[Coren22]

Try doing a stage one compile and tell me how long it takes. The more memory you have, the faster it compiles. This is why they recommend 1GB per core to compile ICS

I see...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So, this long and rigorous testing process is why smartphones are known for their rock-solid stability, seamless integration between hardware and software, and general lack of baffling fail, right?

Re:I see...

[Servaas]

Can we actually get some numbers on that? Or are we all going with your gut feeling on this? And everything after Unless doesn't seem to make sense... the software is over clocking the CPU, but you can't fix that with software?! What what?

Re:I see...

[varmittang]

He said poor hardware can't be fixed with software, unless over clocking was being done software which is causing the hardware to break. That could be fixed by software to not overclock.

Re:I see...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not actually planning on exempting Apple. Their recent "iOS5 battery drain" thing, and various other glitches here and there are better than some of the other vendors; but still rather tepid for somebody who controls the entire OS, chooses the parts that go into the hardware, and has enough market dominance to shake some serious engineering support out of their vendors and contractors....

I'm not sure if most handset vendors just don't care, since they really want you to buy the new hardware, whether they just don't have a sufficient history of in-house software expertise, or whether the vendors of low-power mobile silicon are far nastier about driver blobs and things than their PC counterparts; but smartphones seem surprisingly glitchy for a fixed platform product with substantial vendor control over most of the software. They aren't quite on the same level as, say, ACPI issues in random homebuilds of questionable quality; but they seem pretty mediocre.

Re:I see...

[Andy Dodd]

And the fact that it takes people on XDA a matter of days to find and fix many of the issues in manufacturer releases.

Two words that the mobile industry doesn't seem to understand:
Beta Test

Users would not be so angry about delayed upgrades if we were allowed to test betas. Also, if carriers ran beta tests properly, users would be less unhappy with carrier firmwares. (For example, the data-eating AP Mobile widget on AT&T-originated Samsung devices would either be fixed or gone.)

I can understand carrier certification delays for network interfaces to a small degree - but the truth is that nowadays on any properly designed phone, the radio baseband firmware and the applications processor firmware are well isolated from each other. You don't HAVE to go fucking around in the radio baseband every time you touch the applications processor - the usual end result of this is lots of regressions.

Wi-Fi - utter bullshit. The PC industry has no problem deploying driver updates without recertification of all devices targeted by the driver.
Bluetooth - utter bullshit, same deal as with WiFi - the PC industry has no problem with this.

Re:I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

The long testing process is for confirming stability on the carriers cellular network. This means voice, data, sms, location info, etc across all the global markets the phone is targeted for. The carriers do not care about nor do they test applications at all.

Re:I see...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I imagine that the fact that most PC vendors aren't trying to re-flash the wifi firmware every update, just in case you've cracked it and been able to connect to hotspots produced by another vendor, might help them with that feat...

Re:I see...

[syousef]

I'm not sure if most handset vendors just don't care, since they really want you to buy the new hardware, whether they just don't have a sufficient history of in-house software expertise, or whether the vendors of low-power mobile silicon are far nastier about driver blobs and things than their PC counterparts; but smartphones seem surprisingly glitchy for a fixed platform product with substantial vendor control over most of the software.

They are too busy pushing the marketing for the next big thing to let something petty like actually testing the product get in the way. See they know then can fool customers into buying poor quality crap, then they just pull the model before glitches are sorted for next big thing. So the customer never has a trusty older model to go to. We still buy the shit, so why should they spend more to make it better?

I'm all for progress but life was better when a new model lasted say 3 years instead of 1, and early adopters took the risks and could replace with same towards the end of the cycle if they liked it but it broke or they lost it. Meanwhile buying slightly older tech had it's benefits too - products were ironed out and bugs were actually fixed. Now you replace one immature piece of junk with another, and if you actually find something that works well for you and it comes to an untimely demise, you're stuck gambling on another piece of unreliable untested shit.

Re:I see...

[DigiShaman]

I can do better. How about an original Slashdot story. Android phones more prone to hardware problems

Re:I see...

[X0563511]

Well, you can unfuck hardware with software (see the last paragraph of the linked section).

Re:I see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do better. How about an original Slashdot story. Android phones more prone to hardware problems

How could that possibly be construed as being better than giving some actual numbers to back up your claim that Android devices have a higher failure rate than other phones? There are no numbers there at all relating to what proportion of Android devices, or any other devices, have hardware faults. All it supports is that out of technical support calls made for various phones (and it doesn't say which types had more or less such calls) more related to hardware for the Android phones, and presumably more related to software (or something else?) for the other phones. That doesn't tell you that the Android hardware fails more often any more than it tells you that the other phone software (or something else) fails more often. Because there's no information about how many problems any type of phone had. The article is devoid of any real substance.

That's not to say that Android phones don't have more hardware problems - I have no idea whether they do or not - just that that article is crap, and certainly not better than providing actual numbers.

Care to try again?

Re:I see...

[jeffmeden]

And the fact that it takes people on XDA a matter of days to find and fix many of the issues in manufacturer releases.

Two words that the mobile industry doesn't seem to understand:
Beta Test

Users would not be so angry about delayed upgrades if we were allowed to test betas.

What do you think XDA is? Do you think hundred-billion dollar companies really have a hard time keeping the wraps on test firmware? The leaks are just a thinly veiled beta program, administered by the CarrierIQ software which can report deep enough bug information to allow the carrier to triage and fix any major issues.

Re:I see...

[AmiMoJo]

People expect computers not to work right. If phones had only been a bit less reliable from day one...

Re:I see...

[thegarbz]

Users would not be so angry about delayed upgrades if we were allowed to test betas. Also, if carriers ran beta tests properly, users would be less unhappy with carrier firmwares. (For example, the data-eating AP Mobile widget on AT&T-originated Samsung devices would either be fixed or gone.)

There's a problem with this. Beta testing is something many people do willingly for applications, less people do for operating systems, and very few people put up with on a device where a single wrong step could turn it into a paperweight. While I'm currently running a beta of Ice Cream Sandwich on my phone, there's no way in hell I would have flashed this without past experience showing that this particular model of phone is hard to brick. There's no way I would attempt this on a phone that doesn't have a proper recovery system, a documented hardware dongle for activating download mode in case the bootloader is screwed, or if the phone has a heavily locked bootloader.

The other issue is people in generally expect their phones to just work, whereas the sad state of our world is they expect computers to be buggy and crash every once in a while.

Re:I see...

[Hast]

I have found many problems in CM releases that would typically not have made it into a real manufacturers release. (Eg, on a my Desire HD I find that sometimes the "open application tray" button disappears every now and then.)

And manufacturers do have internal beta tests, that's why sometimes prototypes are found in bars and other places. :-)

It is quite hard to develop software on hardware that isn't finished with drivers and an OS that isn't finished. And to do it in typically very short time as well. (Not saying that customers should accept buggy phones though, that pisses off me as well when it happens.)

(And yes, I work as a mobile phone developer. But not at a company making phones.)

Re:I see...

[Andy Dodd]

Simple solution to that - design a phone properly so it can't be bricked by your betas.

For example, in the case of Samsung, don't include boot.bin or sbl.bin in your beta flash package - BOOM, no-risk beta.

Re:I see...

[Andy Dodd]

CM releases have their own issues due to the fact that many things have to be reverse engineered to do a device bringup.

I'm talking about lightly modded stock ROMs. For example, on the AT&T Galaxy S II, bloatware forced into /system by AT&T is clearly proven to cause problems.

For example, if you even look at the AP Mobile widget the wrong way, it'll start eating insane amounts of data - enough to eat up your 2GB allowance and then some all by itself. So a widget that AT&T *added* and you *cannot remove without root* is driving many customers into data overages.

AT&T's testing must be utterly shit-poor to not have caught this problem.

Re:I see...

[thegarbz]

Easier said than done. If Samsung's case is anything to go by there were excessive problems when people upgraded from Froyo to Gingerbread due to an incompatible boot loader. Flashing the boot loader we were always told is risky and as such a lot of people flashed Gingerbread without the upgraded bootloaders and got major graphic corruption and bootloops. This is what we are talking about right? Beta testing major new releases?

To this day instructions for upgrading the phone ask you to flash a specific version of Gingerbread before going any further with other things like Ice Cream Sandwich, or one of the many subsequent releases of Gingerbread which had their bootloaders stripped out to prevent people from bricking their phones.

In any case the overriding problem here is that vendors will not honour the warranties of phones bricked by an unofficial firmware upgrade. That would be the more sensible thing to do. But vendors are too busy locking down phones, adding moisture sensors that go off on a humid day, shock sensors and other things that they can use as a reason to not replace your phone if it dies.

tl;dr

[Rik Sweeney]

OEMS: I takes time to integrate our own buggy, irremovable software into the kernel.

Re:tl;dr

[realmolo]

Exactly. If the manufacturers/carriers just gave us plain-old-Android, all they would have to do is get their drivers installed.

Samsung is the worst. Their software sucks so bad, it makes their phones unusable. And of course, Verizon loads their crap, too.

Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit. They should say "Look, quit loading up our OS with your crap, or we'll delist you from our search engine and block your networks from accessing our sites".

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If the manufacturers/carriers just gave us plain-old-Android, all they would have to do is get their drivers installed.

Samsung is the worst. Their software sucks so bad, it makes their phones unusable. And of course, Verizon loads their crap, too.

Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit. They should say "Look, quit loading up our OS with your crap, or we'll delist you from our search engine and block your networks from accessing our sites".

In one of the interviews(with TheVerge.com) Matias Duarte, the chief designer of Android said that he encourages OEMs to come up with a modified OS of their own. He believes this fosters creativity and helps tackle the issues of every phone looking like the same thing..

Re:tl;dr

[ebinrock]

Here here. Google lacks the balls Apple definitely has to dictate their product to the manufacturers and carriers (an I'm an Android user and fan). I'd love for there to be ONE killer plain vanilla (Ice Cream Sandwich, haha) Android phone, a Nexus, guaranteed never to have any bloatware on it (have you read about what Verizon did to the Galaxy Nexus?), on all carriers simultaneously, and with a much more organized way of marketing and releasing it than the boondoggle that's currently going on with the Galaxy Nexus. Great phone but the way it's being marketed/sold: FAIL.

Re:tl;dr

[girlintraining]

OEMS: I takes time to integrate our own buggy, irremovable software into the kernel.

Dude, this isn't like upgrading hardware on a computer; There is no no plug and pray. Every device is a blob of different hardware, along with dozens of assorted interfaces baked into the silicon. Motion sensors, GPS, transmitter/receiver pairs, the call stack, etc. It's less like a computer and more like a minature network inside your smartphone, and your phone might look the exact same as the next one on the shelf when you buy it, but the hardware inside might be very different.

It's not just about integrating their "buggy, irremovable software" into the kernel... it's also about integrating a dozen different peripherals together, and then holding it together with bailing wire and duct tape and praying for a miracle.

y'all really need to stop looking at this from your comfortable Everything Is A Computer(tm) mindset. It's not. There might be a microprocessor embedded in there, but that's about where the similarities end.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention:

OEMS: We drag updates out as long as possible because we don't really won't to do them at all. If we take ages and complain about how they put the cost of devices up and delay new products maybe people will stop expecting them. We want people to go out and pay for a new phone to get the latest features not give them away free like communists. We only makes noises about doing updates at all because bloody Apple made a big deal out of them and now people actually expect us to support our devices after they purchase them.

Re:tl;dr

[Swanktastic]

I'm sure the DoJ would have a field day with that one- Extorting the cell phone companies by leveraging their monopoly in search.

Re:tl;dr

[thsths]

> He believes this fosters creativity

So far my experience is that the more a manufacturer meddles with Android, the worse it gets. And this is not because Android is perfect, but (my conclusion) because manufacturer are mostly incompetent when it comes to software.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit excuses. Everyone remember EFI? Hello EFI?

certify the EFI driver, let the OS deal with everything else.

It's bullshit, the entire reason the phone manufacturers take forever is because they want to sell more hardware. There is no excuse why Apple can come out with new iOS updates and android can not. If it was the cell phone companies fault, there would be long delays at Apple too.

Re:tl;dr

[SomePgmr]

Wasn't samsung donating handsets and such to the folks behind cyanogenmod? I could be remembering that wrong, but seemed surprisingly... cooperative for a handset maker.

Re:tl;dr

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My understanding is that giving young children access to finger-paint is also intended to foster creativity. It's just too bad that the result with the OEMs is so similar...

Re:tl;dr

[Baloroth]

And yet, custom ROM makers already have (mostly) working Android 4.0 firmware for several devices. What you say is true, to some extent, but in reality it shouldn't take nearly as long for them to get the upgrade working as it does. Also, many devices use the same hardware (partially), so it's not like common drivers don't exist in the majority of cases.

Re:tl;dr

[idontusenumbers]

I thoroughly enjoy most of the Samsung modifications. Toggles in the notification screen, white-on-black (especially important for OLED), swipe-to-call... Everything is pretty consistent and works pretty well I feel. HTC phones seem (to me, an experienced TouchWiz user) archaic and unusable. Now the garbage that the carriers install (redundant for-pay irremovable EULA-ridden navigation, etc) is an entirely different situation.

Re:tl;dr

[Andy Dodd]

Samsung's software is quite good - Touchwiz is the least intrusive of the vendor skins.

Now the carrier bloat they don't have the balls to keep off of their devices, THAT is a different story. The AT&T Galaxy S II (SGH-I777) is the least mangled of the Samsungs, and even it has some major problems not present in its nearly-identical international older brother (GT-I9100).

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensors in my HTC G2

Rotation Vector Sensor

Proximity Sensor

Orientation Sensor

Magnetic Field Sensor

Linear Acceleration Sensor

Light Sensor

Gravity Sensor

Accelerometer Sensor

Re:tl;dr

[iluvcapra]

Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit.

A senior OSS licensor using its market position and services to retaliate against junior redistributors, essentially in order to protect the integrity of the brand, would be an interesting precedent. Particularly if the senior licensor owned a company that directly competed with its junior licensees. Which in this case, it does.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dude" I don't think that's what he's talking about. I think he's talking about the bullshit bloatware apps that every vendor and/or carrier sticks on their phone: For example my Droid 3 has shit that I never use like the Blockbuster app, City ID app, GoToMeeting, Citrix client app, etc... all shit that I would love to get completely of my phone and off my Apps screen but I can't. Fuck you, Motorola and fuck you Verizon for not letting me do this.

Re:tl;dr

[brainzach]

Custom ROMs often contain bugs that would be unacceptable for OEMs to release. Power users can go to a forum to get support if they are having problems, but the average user will just blame the problems on the carriers and OEMs.

Re:tl;dr

[rabbit994]

Google needs to drop the hammer on that bullshit. They should say "Look, quit loading up our OS with your crap, or we'll delist you from our search engine and block your networks from accessing our sites".

You obviously don't understand why Android is out there. Android is out there simply to drive traffic to Google Services. Google was scared that iOS could/would cut them out of picture. As long as people are still using Google Services via the phone and getting all Ad revenue that represents then Google is happy. They would be more likely to drop the hammer on Verizon doing Bing thing more then anything else.

Re:tl;dr

[mlts]

I might disagree, but in a slight way. Some OEMs add onto Android in nonstandard, but positive ways.

Take Motorola's Atrix. It has security enhancements that really should be in AOSP. The first of which is encrypting everything on the internal drive as a complete image. The second is encrypting files on a memory card on a file by file basis. This way, if the device is lost or stolen, even if the MicroSD card is pulled, it is protected. This is crucial for getting Android into the enterprise.

Then, there is the Webtop feature. It may be limited, but it is interesting nonetheless, and appears to be a decent environment for doing remote work with. With the reports of searches and seizures of phones and laptops without any warrants, having the ability to leave your data at the remote site and work with it via a glorified dumb terminal will become more useful as time progresses.

The ideal would be to let phone makers and cell carriers have their default ROM load, but keep bootloaders open so one can just grab the latest CyanogenMod revision or a custom ROM and use that.

Re:tl;dr

[mlts]

Google needs to take the first step and have their subsidary, Motorola Mobility, lead by example. Even if it is something as simple as going onto a website, typing in your phone's IMEI, getting a response code, and then using that during the fastboot oem unlock procedure, it would show that Google/Motorola was open.

Locked bootloaders do have a place -- they are good at keeping Joe Sixpack out of things he shouldn't be mucking with, so the tech support department can tell him to hard reset and go about his life. However, if someone is willing to go to a website, acknowledge that they are doing stuff that only they will be taking responsibility for, and has the tech ability to get adb working with a device, it is only fair for the phone maker to hand over the keys.

Re:tl;dr

[mattack2]

Google was scared that iOS could/would cut them out of picture.

Maps is using Google. Safari's search is using Google.. Google can/does ship apps.

Re:tl;dr

[Baloroth]

This is true. OEM's also have considerably more and (presumably) more knowledgeable people working on the problem. My point was, if hackers on the Internet can get it working, paid software engineers should be able to get it working well. Maybe my expectations are just too high though.

Oh, and OEM ROMs often contain bugs that it should be unacceptable for an OEM to release... but still, fair point.

Re:tl;dr

[ceoyoyo]

There's a very open philosophy.

If Android is going to be open source, you have to take the good with the bad. Also there's the little matter of an antitrust investigation if Google starts leveraging their dominance in one area to control another.

Re:tl;dr

[Amouth]

this is so close to the truth it hurts - i wish i had mod points today

Re:tl;dr

[mattack2]

(mostly) working

I applaud you for being willing to buy off the shelf "(mostly) working" software, and not being POed about it. You expect that of the rest of us?

Re:tl;dr

[Baloroth]

Well, considering the quality of most off-the-shelf stuff, yeah, I kinda do (/jk... mostly)

However, my point was if a hacker in his mother's basement can get a mostly working version together, the actual manufacturers of the phone who knows it in intimate detail and have absolutely every last specification and driver for it (and source), and probably have access to early preview copies of ICS in many cases, should have no trouble in making a "perfectly" working version in nearly the same timeframe. Not 6 months later, as often happens.

Of course, then people might have less incentive to buy the *new* device that does have the latest and greatest, but maybe I'm just being cynical.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

have you read about what Verizon did to the Galaxy Nexus?

No. I've been following it closely and the Verizon version isn't out yet. I've been wondering why it's out in Canada and Europe. Maybe they've been working hard Verizoning it, but I've not see any articles about that.

Re:tl;dr

[Archangel Michael]

You mean like Random Reboots? Oh trust me, the carriers and OEMs just point back to each other on it, or blame some software I've installed.

My Droid randomly reboots. Just enough to be annoying when it happens, but not often enough to try to chase the bug. I'd be on a custom rom if they had a decent one for my phone (X) but the locked boot loader is only partially cracked (from what I've seen).

Re:tl;dr

[markzip]

Seconded.
One plain vanilla phone on every carrier with every radio.

For all other phones: On starting the phone for the first time pop a dialog box:

Would you like to use plain vanilla android (with no enhancements for this particular device)?
OR
Would you like to use TouchWizSenseBlur a beautiful-finger-paint-like-buble-gum-super-duper-extras-which-will-love-you-all-night-long-and-cook-you-breakfast-in-the-morning-full-of-win-enhancements-for-your-personal-phone-and-life?

At the start of 2010 it looked like Google was going to try to go down this road with google.com/phone but then Verizon came calling and said "we don;t think so". Google got into bed with VZW on the issue of net neutrality for wireless networks and one of the victims was their project to change the way phones are bought and sold in the US. Perhaps Larry Page will revisit this in the future, but it's difficult to see how it fits into his "focusing" strategy. I'm not holding my breath that all this changes in the US any time soon.

And yes, I vote with my money. I bought an unlocked Nexus One through Google.com/phone on the very first day it went live and replaced it last month with an imported unlocked Galaxy Nexus GSM. And yes, it is a fine phone. When I showed it to the folks at the local Verizon store they were salivating. And then they offered to sell me cases and sleeves for it. They had those in stock, even if they still don't have a release date for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus phone itself.

Re:tl;dr

[Belial6]

Having an open bootloader and having a hard reset to return the device to a factory default are not mutually exclusive. Have stripped copy of the boot-loader + OS on a chip that has just enough to connect to the network, download, and reinstall the current official bootloader/OS. Build the phone to do a factory restore with a small switch hidden under the battery. This would make bricking the phone, all but impossible. Of course, fear that users will load problematic software on their phones has nothing to do with locking the bootloaders.

Re:tl;dr

[AmiMoJo]

Samsung is one of the best because they just supply a skin and some bundled apps. HTC replace some of the Google apps and their skin really slows the phone down. Another bonus for Samsung Galaxy owners is that their phone is basically the same as Google's Nexus so updates get ported in a day or two of Google releasing them.

If you want vanilla Android just get a Google phone.

Re:tl;dr

[AmiMoJo]

Android 3 supports full disk encryption so all phones and tablets that get 3 or above will too. Apparently some phones running 2.3 support it too, such as the Droid.

Re:tl;dr

[WiiVault]

Yeah if you need to learn anything about how well manufacturers can program look the OSs of most feature phones pre-Android, iOS, etc. They were horrific. Samsung and rest, stay the fuck away from messing with the OS.

Re:tl;dr

[AmiMoJo]

Often the driver manufacturers are as much to blame. The company I work for is creating a new WinCE 7 device and the drivers that the CPU module vendor supplied wouldn't record any sound. In the end it turned out that for some reason setting the recording volume to 0xFFFF doesn't work, you have to use some kind of BCD and set it to 0x9999. Delayed our product but wasn't our fault.

Re:tl;dr

[Belial6]

Actually, it is exactly like a computer, because it IS a computer. No, it isn't a WINDOWS computer, but it is still a computer. There are some pretty standard interfaces for connecting hardware at the chip level. If phone manufacturers are not using standard interfaces to connect Motion sensors, and GPS into their phones, they are doing things all wrong. I suspect that they are in fact using standard interfaces. I might buy that the transmitter/receiver pairs are proprietary, but in the numbers that they are buying them, even those should be widely available with a standard interface. There is nothing in phones that requires fundamental interface changes to the OS beyond adding new classes of hardware. There is no reason that an OS upgrade should break the binary drivers running the phones hardware any more than it would break binary drivers running a desktop OS's drivers. In fact, it should be less so, since the underlying Linux kernel is what would be driving the hardware, and that isn't generally what is being changed with an Android upgrade.

Re:tl;dr

[mlts]

Glad to hear that google has addressed this with ICS, because this has been a major thorn in the side of getting Android adopted in the enterprise.

Now, perhaps Google can merge ChromeOS and the existing Webtop OS in the Atrix/Bionic devices. This would make for an ideal remote access client.

Re:tl;dr

[Arker]

Custom ROMs may have bugs but the 'stock' carrier supplied ROMs appear to be far, far worse in every case.

I had to laugh reading the article, "Furthermore, by putting all this efforts into testing and certification, we ensure that quality and conformance is at a top level, in benefit for all consumers worldwide" - yeah right. If they actually did that I would expect to see some results. In fact uncertified ROMs from amateurs working in their spare time seem to miraculously beat the carriers on quality and conformance, every time.

This quote sounds like it's closer to the truth: "Features like MotoCast, Smart Actions, and our comprehensive enterprise solutions are integral parts of our device experiences, and we want to make sure we continue delivering differentiated experiences for our consumers with these software upgrades." - translation, we need a lot of time to get our bloated crapware that no one wants or needs in place and unremovable, the better to sell our so-called 'customers' as a commodity to other companies.

Re:tl;dr

[swillden]

Android 3 supports full disk encryption so all phones and tablets that get 3 or above will too. Apparently some phones running 2.3 support it too, such as the Droid.

Note that this requires locking your phone with a password, though, not a pattern. This is because the decryption key is derived from your password. This is good security design, but the unlock pattern can't really provide enough entropy so you have to use a password.

It also means that if you forget your password, you're screwed. That's because it's good security.

Re:tl;dr

[Totenglocke]

I'd say the ideal way would be to make Android use the Linux approach - UI's are just installed like any other application and aren't part of the OS itself, so that you can install the HTC Sense UI, Motoblur, whatever and if you don't like it, simply uninstall it and A) go back to the default Android UI or B) install another UI. Companies could also easily install things like the Webtop as software that can be installed or uninstalled at will. Hell, they could easily just provide their own brand specific app store for downloading said apps / UI's. You can have an HTC app store that ONLY HTC phones can access but then people are free to add / remove the apps as they please.

That way Google controls the OS and can rapidly push OS updates and then carriers / handset manufacturers can still customize their phones.

Re:tl;dr

[Totenglocke]

As someone who's owned two different HTC Android phones now and has used Samsung Android phones, I'd love to know in what ways you think HTC phones are "archaic and unusable". Even my friends who were devoted Samsung loyalists switched to HTC because Sense is vastly superior to TouchWiz (especially since TouchWiz looks like it was designed by Fischer-Price).

Regarding carrier installed crap, Sprint / HTC (one or the other, possibly both working together - not sure) have drastically improved this and on the Evo 3D you can uninstall almost every single pre-installed app without rooting and you'll still be able to get OTA updates just fine.

Re:tl;dr

[hitmark]

Yea, Android was designed to have its basic UI replaced. The problem as i understand it, is that Samsung, and perhaps others, go deeper then just a UI swap.

Re:tl;dr

[hitmark]

I guess then as 4 carries forward from 3, any tablet or phone running 4 or later should get full device encryption.

Re:tl;dr

[hitmark]

Yep. There was a Torvalds rant about this in relation to the ARM branch of the Linux kernel. There is no real standard way for the kernel to reach out and check what hardware is out there like one have on PCI. Some of the parts are initiated more or less blindly as a result, and the ARM branch have bunch of sub-branches that walk all over each other because of small variations between the SoCs. I think this is what Linaro has been set up to tackle.

Re:tl;dr

[m50d]

I found I missed the "HTC Sense" interface when I got an android without it. Agreed in the general case though.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers on the internet cheat a *LOT* to get it to work, and completely ignore platform rules and compatibility. More often than not they don't touch the kernel at all and just shoehorn the new framework on top of the old system. So that fancy pants ICS ROM might just be running a gingerbread kernel with gingerbread binaries, for example.

Interestingly enough, custom ROMs are far, far more of a fragmentation problem than people that don't get updates, as they rarely if ever even run the basic compatibility test to make sure they pass.

Re:tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

HTC recently did this with the sensation etc. I can unlock my bootloader after I've confirmed (and saved on their website) that I risk voiding warranty.

That said, it is not as complete or "safe" as the xda community's unlock. :P

Because Sprint Said Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why!

Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[whereissue]

Anyone else having a hard time taking something called "Ice Cream Sandwich" seriously?

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[mcspoo]

Good God, no. I mean, you know what someone will do for a Klondike bar??!?

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[bragr]

No more than I have a hard time taking something called "Gingerbread" seriously.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[Anonymous Coward]

No more than an operating system named "Snow Leopard".

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[Servaas]

Nor any zealots defending any million dollar money making company.

If someone above the age of 24 talks to you like the next upcoming product will cure cancer you should be entitled to shoot them. On the spot.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[ebinrock]

Well, if you think about it, all marketing/advertising is about evoking good emotions about the product. I for one don't mind conjuring up images of something really scrumptious when buying a really nice piece of electronics. Heck, Apple has always made their buttons look delicious like jelly beans. It's all part of the appeal.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[geekoid]

What if the upcoming product is a cancer cure?

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then hopefully there's another upcoming product that will cure gunshot wounds.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[Pope]

Oh, those only come from 17 year olds, keep up, man!

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[whereissue]

Hey mods... Why would you mod my non-trolling question a troll?
It's a light-hearted question which has resulted in a light-hearted thread of comments.
If I'd said something negative, I could see it, but... seriously; What gives?

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[bonch]

Hell, I can't even stand the phrase "walled garden" anymore.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[shutdown -p now]

This being Slashdot, it's hard to tell sarcasm from genuine idiocy or asshattery - for pretty much any topic, there will be someone who'll post something like what you did, and actually mean it. Hence, if you want to dodge troll/flamebait mods for sarcastic comments, make that sarcasm abundantly clear. Otherwise, you're pretty much assumed guilty by default.

Re:Walled garden... or Zuccotti Park?

[whereissue]

Now they're even down-modding my attempt to clarify that I'm not trolling.
I genuinely don't get it.

FTA

[agent_vee]

"Operators then may want to customize the software, and the OS must be localized for the market and language."

I think that is where the bulk of the time is spent.

Re:FTA

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a really kind euphemism for "nickel and dime(ing)" their customers. Verizon, for example, is infamous for disabling phone features that might encroach on their overpriced premium services.

Apple's biggest innovation was really wrestling control of devices away from carriers. Some of Google's moves with android, I feel, are a step in the wrong direction. Mobile service needs to be shaken down and commoditized in the US. If you think it is now you are either stupid, a shill, or a congressperson on the take.

Re:FTA

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. AT&T publicly announced that they would be rolling out 2.3 for Infuse 4g units in August. It's now December, and it's a complete no-show.

Re:FTA

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that's an america only problem right? At least in Europe carriers have very little say over the devices. So much for innovation.

Re:FTA

[AmiMoJo]

In the UK you can buy the phone with a contract from a third party. It is usually a bit cheaper and crucially you get an unmolested phone direct from the manufacturer. No crappy carrier rubbish, no having to wait longer for updates.

Doesn't the US have anything like that?

Re:FTA

[thegarbz]

To give an anecdotal example: Samsung released I9000XXJVK (Gingerbread for Galaxy S) in March this year. It was late August before Optus users in Australia got their updates. A full month after Vodafone users in Australia got theirs, which also still lagged several months behind Europe.

Is it because—

[alvinrod]

Is it because the handset manufacturers don't make any money from the software and are probably more interested in selling you a new phone? After a year or so of support, they've generally shown almost no interest in pushing out additional upgrades as they probably don't even sell that particular model of phone any longer. Unless it's a Nexus phone, or a particularly popular model, support is pretty sketchy. There are a lot of promises to update phones to ICS, but I won't be surprised when a lot of those plans get canceled or delayed indefinitely.

Wading through the code and carrier requirements certainly tacks on some additional time, but considering that these companies don't have much incentive outside of brand loyalty, which may not even exist to any serious extent, to update their old hardware, I don't think that they try too terribly hard to get it done in a timely fashion.

Re:Is it because—

[brainzach]

That explains why manufacturers stop supporting older models, but it doesn't explain the delays in the phones that it currently supports.

It would advantageous for phone manufacturers to have timely updates to the phones. Delaying the process just pisses of the consumer who will want to go to another brand with faster and more reliable upgrades.

Re:Is it because—

[sohmc]

Not necessarily so.

The average consumer, who knows nothing about Android other than the fact that it runs on his phone, couldn't care less. They just know some new version came out and it will be rolled out on the phone soon.

People like you and me (e.g. the power users), who want the latest and greatest, will either attempt to compile the kernel ourselves or buy a new phone.

My guess is that phone companies -- or carriers -- have little incentive to actually push the update. Most people will want a newer model anyway so why waste the energy, time, money, and manpower on something few people will actually want.

Re:Is it because—

[Superken7]

You missed the point, this is not about getting a new update nor not, which is another matter entirely (although not any less important).

This is about why it takes so long for updates that *are* happening to reach users. Keep in mind that even though ICS was just released, there are phones that are only now getting Gingerbread, the last major Android version. It is sad and it is a rather difficult problem to solve.

Re:Is it because—

[Anonymous Coward]

They should investigate whether it's more interesting to spend a lot of time on R&D designing new hardware AND new software or just sell the same hardware 6 or 12 month more.
They can still advertise it if they want to.
(If they have hardware flaws they would like to fix, they can still do that, the software part will be zero or easy to manage if it's small)

Re:Is it because—

[BitZtream]

Yes it does. Support stops at the very moment you buy the phone. From that point on, they want to sell you the next phone, the only way you'll buy the next phone is if yours dies or the next one has some feature you don't have. If they give you all the software features, you won't upgrade. Its not even a little bit complex.

Apple does the same thing. I say that as an iPhone 4s owner. The only reason I bought it over a cheaper 4 is Siri. The camera is another good reason, but its not that big of a deal. So while Apple gives my older phones updates, they also intentionally leave out things to give you a reason to buy a new device.

Interestingly enough, Apple, while basically holding back things they could give older phones they STILL provide better updates and less BS than Android devices.

Let me give you guys a hint, when you pick 'free' as your deciding factor on why you buy something, the end result is shitty quality. Quality costs, its mind blowing that so many seemingly intelligent people can't grasp that manufactures jumping on a FREE OS are going to result in a bunch of steaming piles of outdated shit.

Manufactures running Android are in a race to the cheapest possible device, if you expect anything else, you're an ignorant idiot who deserves what you get. If they were concerned about quality, they wouldn't have a problem investing in a non-shitty OS. And you can tell me Android isn't shitty when its own developers stop saying its shitty compared to iOS.

Re:Is it because—

[brainzach]

If that was true, then manufacturers would not push out any updates.

Maybe for cheaper models, they won't support at all, but buyers of the top of the line flagship phones expect updates for their phones. Most people own the phones for two year before upgrading so manufacturers support updates on phones for at least the first year. If one phone manufacturer fails to deliver timely updates, then competitors will take advantage.

Re:Is it because—

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'd like us to buy new phones more often, they would convince the carriers to go with contracts shorter than 2 years, or no contracts.

Re:Is it because—

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is really f-ing sad because they usually also want to lock you the f into their partner-or-alliance-mandated bloatcrap so they lock the bootloader to make it a PITA to modify the software.

The lack of post-sale support wouldn't be so bad if that weren't the case.

The simplest way to unscrew the balance corporate and consumer interest would be to legally mandate user rootability and unlocked bootloader.

This allows the user and dev communities for each device to pursue post-sale self-support, and encourages the manufacturers to compete on something other than seeing who can push the most bloat into our devices.

You see, there's a business model there. Every one of those games or apps you can't uninstall is paid for in one way or another. Someone has made a deal resulting in its inclusion. The carriers have learned that they can make money and get useful favors for force-feeding their partners products onto their customers.

The core issue is whether a user has a right to control what software can run on his device. There are people, largely those who have enjoyed the benefits of the aforementioned shovelware business model, who believe that a user should not be able to control the software running on his own device, despite the fact that this battle has already been fought in the 90s with PCs.

We need to settle this shit once and for all.

If I purchase a piece of hardware, I better god damned well be able to do anything I want with it, including running any god damned software I see fit, no matter if that software is a car or a phone or a fucking pacemaker.

If I do something illegal with said hardware, there are laws to handle that.

Why is this so important? Well, because I have this wetware computer in my head which runs firmware and software I've worked very hard on. I don't want to see a future where this issue isn't resolved the right way and my right to control my own mind is compromised.

This should be a campaign issue in 2012, seriously.

Constitutional right to control software on owned electronic devices by 2013 or bust

Hey.

[Colin Smith]

It compiles. What more do you want?
 

Re:Hey.

[Anonymous Coward]

It compiles. What more do you want?

because everything that compiles work, riiight? (written with the most sarcasm I can muster)

Re:Hey.

[shutdown -p now]

Sure it does. It might not work in a way you expect it to, but that's an altogether different issue. ~

HA!

[dubiago]

More like a long and arduous process of developing dumbass manufacturer interface overlays and bloatware.

Re:HA!

[thsths]

And an incompetent process, too. Because competent developers would separate their changes, and integrate them only with a few hooks, so that they are easy to port. Unfortunately, competent software developers seems to be completely absent from the Android phone market.

Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

I know I am going to get flamed for being an apologist, but you know that until about a year ago Dell was selling computers preloaded with Windows XP, right? Windows XP, which made its debut in 2001? They were selling (and people were glad to get) a computer with 9 year old software on it. Now we have Android OS from Google and the turnaround can be anywhere from 4 months to a year before it is running on a good portion of the install base, and we complain about it? Why? If the phone doesn't do what you want it to, don't buy it thinking that some software release will come along next week and make it all better (even if the retailers want to insist that)...

Learn from history: buy the phone that does today what you want your phone to do today. For a crowd of computer dorks who know all too well the ups and downs of the software development lifecycle, we here on /. sure do like to play dumb...

Re:Compared to what?

[wstrucke]

Android is free and newer versions tend to not only work better but provide more features. Windows upgrades tend to consume more resources and generally introduce new bugs. It's not really fair to compare the two. That being said, it would be a completely different story if your new PC came with the promise that newer versions of windows would be made available at no charge over your existing internet connection. Why shouldn't you be upset when a new version is released and months go by without your upgrade coming through?

Re:Compared to what?

[BitZtream]

For a crowd of computer dorks who know all too well the ups and downs of the software development lifecycle, we here on /. sure do like to play dumb...

Well, the problem is, slashdot is no longer the site frequented by those who know what they are doing. Judging by the articles over the past year, even more so since Taco left, slashdot is trying to be just another mainstream site with a tech focus.

You pretty much have to write off about 2/3rds of the user base (anyone with a UID over 1 million) as a high schooler without a clue. Sure there are the occasional high UIDs that aren't idiots because they JUST created an account or lost an older one, but for the most part, anyone above UID 1 million is just your average Joe who read something on the Internet and think they are a developer/sysadmin/netadmin/engineer/astrophysicist.

Re:Compared to what?

[thsths]

> Windows XP, which made its debut in 2001?

And guess what makes the difference. Right, Windows XP *is still supported*. Support runs until 2014!

Google on the other hand has the explicit policy of not supplying any previous version of Android with security updates. Whether they timely patch the latest version also remains debatable, because they keep the list of security issues confidential. Google has a long way to go in this matter to even reach the standard of Microsoft.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you heard of iOS? It's a mobile phone OS made by Apple that runs on the iPhone and iPad. Updates that take Google 4 months to a year roll out to a good portion of devices takes Apple 4 hours to a week to roll out. Generally when most people compare Android to something they are comparing it to one of the other major phone operating systems, not to Windows XP. For example try iOS, Windows Mobile, Blackberry OS, WebOS next time you have this question.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anubis IV]

I wish I had mod points right now to mod you up.

People were asking for Windows XP in large quantities still, which is why Dell continued to sell it with their computers. You don't see people bemoaning the fact that the carriers and manufacturers are making plans to start rolling out upgrades and phones that lack Android 2.x on them, whereas you did see that in the PC market when Vista came out. Android 4 is seen as a legitimate upgrade to the Android line. Vista was seen as a downgrade by many, so they preferred to do without it.

Comparing the two makes little sense.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should you expect that your device will get new versions of an operating system at all? Because "it's free"? But it's not. At BARE minimum, it needs to be tested on the hardware (which is nowhere near as standardized for mobile devices as it is for desktops) and possibly have new drivers written or updated.

Like the apologist above, I'm dumbfounded by the sense of entitlement the technology community has. Non-techies don't even think about what an operating system IS, much less that it might be upgraded. Hell, I know tech-savy people who HATE it when their phone gets OTA updates because icons change and stuff.

On one had, bitch when Facebook changes. On the other hand, bitch when your (effectively obsolete) 1.5-year-old phone doesn't update.

Re:Compared to what?

[geekoid]

"is, slashdot is no longer the site frequented by those who know what they are doing"

never really was.
This is m 3rd uid

Re:Compared to what?

[Temujin_12]

I learned this lesson the hard way with the Motorola Cliq XT. I bought it a while back (2 yrs?) despite it only having 1.6 on it because I was told they were already working on a 2.0 upgrade that would be coming. I waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually they canceled the upgrade and sent an email out recommending a new phone (quite the slap in the face).

Once I saw that no upgrade was coming, I rooted my phone and installed cyanogen mod. I have 2.1 on my phone and it works great (only minor bugs). Plus my phone doesn't have that CarrierIQ spyware on it. I figure that they broke their contract when they canceled the upgrade and left me hanging.

This experience taught me:
1) Cell phone makers simply don't care about software. They have almost zero incentive to put effort into it and often have incentive NOT to invest in software.
2) Never run the stock install from the phone maker. Root it and install a custom mod that is much closer to vanilla Android as possible.

Re:Compared to what?

[jedidiah]

Anyone who was in the peanut gallery in 1998 was a little more clued in. The audience wasn't nearly as wide then. You could expect that people had a little bit more of a clue by virtue of the fact that they were even aware of the Internet.

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

I wish I had mod points right now to mod you up.

People were asking for Windows XP in large quantities still, which is why Dell continued to sell it with their computers. You don't see people bemoaning the fact that the carriers and manufacturers are making plans to start rolling out upgrades and phones that lack Android 2.x on them, whereas you did see that in the PC market when Vista came out. Android 4 is seen as a legitimate upgrade to the Android line. Vista was seen as a downgrade by many, so they preferred to do without it.

Comparing the two makes little sense.

Whenever I talk to an Android user who hasn't been exposed to internet forums, there is probably a 95% chance they don't even know what version of the OS they are currently using, much less what version is somewhere in the ether waiting to get released for their phone. Articles are constantly appearing that bemoan the Android upgrade cycle, and while there are a lot of things about it that seem impractical (such as giving carriers, who know little about hardware OR software, so much say over what changes will be made) it always has the stink of a pissing match because a little version number buried somewhere deep in some settings menu has so little to do with what the phone actually does.

If these articles were all about how Android 2.3 had glaring bug [X] or glaring missing feature [Y], and Android 3 or 4 or 9.8 was supposed to fix all that, then I would say "game on" and be right there lighting the fire under whoever is holding up the process. As it is, all we are doing is complaining about the weather because honestly if version numbering and release state were kept under wraps (like they are on monolithic platforms) then none of this would ever be discussed at all.

If I were to (warning, a line is about to be crossed) write an article that said Apple's iOS 6 was "finished" and I had evidence to back it up, and I went on to complain that the release wouldn't happen until December 2012 because of some group's lengthy test process, or bureaucracy, or AT&T's insistence, or whatever, should that depress all the Apple users thinking that they were holding a phone in their hands that was running an "outdated" operating system?

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

On 11 oct some XP users received update for that OS. Did Android users for their more yonger devices?

Re:Compared to what?

[Karlt1]

Now we have Android OS from Google and the turnaround can be anywhere from 4 months to a year before it is running on a good portion of the install base, and we complain about it? Why? If the phone doesn't do what you want it to, don't buy it thinking that some software release will come along next week and make it all better (even if the retailers want to insist that)...

The day the iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0 was released I was able to upgrade my iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and iPad to iOS 5.

The day that Apple released a security update, I was able to click on 'Upgrade' on my phone and get the update that day -- as were all other iOS 5 users worldwide, independent of the carrier.

Even MS has seen to be able to figure out how to upgrade WP7 phones without the carrier or manufacturer's intervention.

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

That being said, it would be a completely different story if your new PC came with the promise that newer versions of windows would be made available at no charge over your existing internet connection. Why shouldn't you be upset when a new version is released and months go by without your upgrade coming through?

Expectation management is definitely not handled well by the people selling the phone, you have a definite point. At the same time, Google has a real branding problem because no one can really be bothered to tell the difference between what the Android OS itself is, and what runs on their phone (a piece of software often bearing very little resemblance to the original version)...

Re:Compared to what?

[Anubis IV]

Why should you expect that your device will get new versions of an operating system at all? Because "it's free"?

Perhaps because it was promised? And may have been a factor in deciding which product to purchase? If you have a choice between two otherwise equal phones, and one comes with a promise of an upgrade to the next OS, you'll go with that one, since it'll be able to run newer apps for longer and will have more features over the life of the phone than the other one does.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the computers Dell offered Windows XP a year (or two) ago, was XP the default choice or were the newer versions of Windows offered?

There it's a customer's choice to live in the past.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Believing salesmen promises (and the fact that they even make such promises) is certainly a problem. I understand why THAT happens. What I don't understand is why people haven't realized that those promises are empty.

Buying a product because you were told you would get something for free later puts you in a horrible position. Don't do it.

Yes, that sounds like blaming the victim. Those promises should NOT be happening... but that's marketing for you. If there's a promise for an upgrade, the pressure will probably force them to release it EVENTUALLY....

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

The day the iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0 was released I was able to upgrade my iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and iPad to iOS 5.

You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?

Re:Compared to what?

[Karlt1]

You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?

Google patches a security flaw in Android and releases it. How long does it take the patch to be available for every Android phone worldwide?

When Apple released iOS 5.0.1. Every iOS user worldwide got a notification that a new OS was available and all they had to do was press 'Update' from their phone/tablet.

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

If you have a choice between two otherwise equal phones, and one comes with a promise of an upgrade to the next OS, you'll go with that one, since[...]

Since you (the fictional user in this story) are a MORON. Never buy on promises. No matter what the product or how convincing the sales rep is. This is a lesson everyone probably learns once, but some seem doomed to learn over and over and over and over.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Anyone who was in the peanut gallery in 1998 was a little more clued in. The audience wasn't nearly as wide then. You could expect that people had a little bit more of a clue by virtue of the fact that they were even aware of the Internet.

Truth, but we all know the only constant is change. There are still good comments out there, they're just a lot harder to find.

Re:Compared to what?

[fermion]

The question is not if one can get an older version of the OS installed if you wish. The question is why one cannot get a phone with the current version of the OS. Yes, as WIndows XP is the stable version of MS Windows some people choose to buy Windows XP. However, even if they do, they can if fact get the latest SP of XP for any computer that ships with XP. And Dell does sell most if not all computers running Windows 7.

The problem with Android are three fold. One is that Android and the hardware is rapidly evolving so it is likely difficult to match the two quickly. Second there is no monetary incentive for the cell phone makers or the mobile companies to update the phones. The cell phone companies want to sell phones and the mobile companies want to sell contracts, so no one benefits from updating the phone. It does not move product. Third most cell phone companies probably do not have the kind of expertise and workflow to make such versioning efficient. They have not had to do this in the past. Upgrading a phone in the past has meant buying a new one. Since they are not making any money off it, why invest in the process?

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is free and newer versions tend to not only work better but provide more features.

Tell that to my LG Optimus 2X. After upgrading to Gingerbread battery life is a joke, WiFi won't work, along with several other annoyances. And they don't support downgrading.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I am going to get flamed for being an apologist, but you know that until about a year ago Dell was selling computers preloaded with Windows XP, right? Windows XP, which made its debut in 2001? They were selling (and people were glad to get) a computer with 9 year old software on it.

While XP came out waaaay back when, very very few parts of XP are actually that old. Most of it has been replaced & upgraded over the years. If you still have an original XP CD, do a file diff between XP and XP service pack 3 with all patches.

Learn from history: buy the phone that does today what you want your phone to do today.

And that's why XP is still popular...

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

You get the update the day that Apple decides they want to start pushing the update, it has nothing to do with when the code was "finished" because Apple keeps all of that under wraps. Whether this is good/bad/indifferent is up to the user, but comparing that process to the Android one is awkward at best. Oh yeah, and how is Siri working on that iPhone 4 of yours?

Google patches a security flaw in Android and releases it. How long does it take the patch to be available for every Android phone worldwide?

When Apple released iOS 5.0.1. Every iOS user worldwide got a notification that a new OS was available and all they had to do was press 'Update' from their phone/tablet.

The last (and only, from my memory) time a security issue surfaced, Google plugged the hole via a silent update to it's application suite and it did not require any user intervention at all. There was also no documented cases of the exploit being used "in the wild" so the action taken by Google was sufficient to mitigate any risk. Whether or not this is the best way to handle things is again, up to the user. However, I would be interested to see an "in the wild" exploit that gained traction due to the lack of swift action by either Google or the carriers.

Re:Compared to what?

[quacking duck]

Or even better: Sony PS3. You buy based on an actual shipping, advertised feature. And then they take it away with an update.

Re:Compared to what?

[Karlt1]

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/google-android-sms-bug/

This is just one bug where Google patched it for the Nexus but had to wait on the various manufacturers/carriers to send out a patch? How long do you think it took carriers to send out an update? How many manufacturers didn't bother about updating their phones?

The 3GS was introduced in June 2009 and is still getting updates. How many Android phones from even last year are still being kept up to date by the manufacturer?

Re:Compared to what?

[Anubis IV]

So you're suggesting that, given two otherwise equal phones, you'd recommend taking the one that makes no promises for future upgrades over the one that at least promises them? And I'm the moron?

Come on.

Stop being argumentative for no good reason. I didn't say that you should buy on a promise over a device that's already shipping with more features. I said that if you have two otherwise equal choices, the one that has a possibility of future advancement is better than one that has no potential for it. That's all I said, and it's just plain common sense. Why you chose to attack me personally for no good reason, I cannot even begin to fathom. Slashdot works a lot better with a little civility.

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

Given that I have been trawling Android forums for about 18 months and I have yet to encounter a single user report of this outside of Google's own bug reporting system (and I certainly never met a user IRL that saw this problem), this falls squarely into the "yawn" bucket. Also, it's not at all security related. I'd be interested in anything else you might have, though...

Re:Compared to what?

[Bucky24]

about 2/3rds of the user base (anyone with a UID over 1 million) as a high schooler without a clue

My UID is almost 2 million, you insensitive clod! And I haven't been in highschool for almost 7 years.

Re:Compared to what?

[spacepimp]

Think about this though: On that same computer i can install, Windows Vista, Win 7, Ubuntu melancholic meerkat, CentOS, haiku on any day of the week that I want, and the second it is released. That is a right i certainly do no have on any cellular phone in the US. This is all in the name of protecting the carriers network. In the 70's you had to rent a phone form the phone company for 10 bucks a month, under the same ruse. Buy the phone you want, with the right to upgrade it how you see fit. I want the carriers to be dumb pipes, and get the hell out of my way.

Re:Compared to what?

[markzip]

This experience taught me: 1) Cell phone makers simply don't care about software. They have almost zero incentive to put effort into it and often have incentive NOT to invest in software. 2) Never run the stock install from the phone maker. Root it and install a custom mod that is much closer to vanilla Android as possible.

3) Buy a handset with vanilla Android on it to start with.

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:Compared to what?

[Belial6]

This is all too true. In fact, when Google released the source code for ICS, and had not even shipped a compiled version yet, there were people here on Slashdot complaining about Android phones not being updated yet.

Re:Compared to what?

[shutdown -p now]

Frankly, the way things are with Android, the only safe choice is to buy "Google experience" devices like Nexus phones. Google has a proven track record of providing timely updates; everyone else, not so much (it depends on specific models, and you never know whether yours will be lucky one or not).

Re:Compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. When I purchased a Thinkpad from Lenovo a couple of years ago, they included Wndows Vista for "free," but I had to pay extra for XP.

Re:Compared to what?

[hitmark]

Well that was a large part thanks to netbooks and that Vista was a system hog like no other.

End result was that MS had to keep XP on life support to avoid customers getting to know alternatives like Ubuntu.

It may not have helped that Longhorn got restarted 2-3 times, resulting in XP getting SP2 that provided a software firewall and some other security upgrades, either.

All in all XP ended up as "good enough" for quite a few. Then again, it was also the first NT based Windows that was sold to the mass market...

Re:Compared to what?

[hitmark]

I do wonder how many iOS users have never updated their device. Or perhaps having itunes remind them ever so often helps in that regard...

Re:Compared to what?

[jeffmeden]

I said the fictional user in the story was a moron because they fell for a sales scam that is as old as time itself: "how about you buy some of this bullshit". Slashdot works a lot better with a little reading comprehension.

Re:Compared to what?

[Anubis IV]

Parenthetical statements merely add something, but can be ignored while retaining the meaning of the sentence. Without your parenthetical remark, your comment reads as, "Since you are a MORON," in reference to me. How else should I interpret that than as an insult to my intelligence? And now you're trying to backpedal and suggest that it wasn't aimed at me at all? Then why mention me in the first place if it wasn't your goal to offend me? Why not say, "Since the fictional user in this story is a MORON"?

Look, you're entitled to your opinion, but you made a poor argument while being intentionally abrasive. Own up to it. I'm a big guy and can take a little verbal abuse. That said, your point, though argued poorly, is a valid one: people should not buy on a promise. With that, I agree.

Long before Sony...

[Synerg1y]

The community will port 4.0 to existing phones and newer ones, just like gingerbread. This is because google releases the code to everybody, rather than OEMs. On the atrix, it was due to go up to gingerbread by Motorola, but long long before that gingerblur came out bringing with it most of the features. The official update was of course slightly better, but then again the atrix is locked, what can we expect?

P.S. unlocked phones get much much better support from the community, such as the g2, so it may be worth staying tuned to XDA for your phone and see if 4.0 is ported to it yet.

Ummm... It already hit my phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Took about 2 days before my phone auto-upgraded.

3. Submit the upgrade to the carriers for certific

[danbob999]

Why is this step even listed? I don't want my carrier to certify the software running in my phone. My carrier can't even bill me without mistake. Why would they be competent in testing smart phone OSes?

What certification process?

[bogaboga]

whereas Sony focused on explaining the time-consuming certification process."

What certification process is SONY talking about if in the end, (as evidenced by apps that will not correctly run on their devices), apps deemed compatible with Android still will not install/run on all their product portfolio? Who is SONY trying to fool?

Re:What certification process?

[Anonymous Coward]

examples?

Hardware always seems to be ahead of software

[metalgamer84]

Reminds me of the original A64 procs from AMD. "Hey we have the first x64 procs for desktops" Great, no software will be able to take advantage of it for the next 3-5 years.

Re:Hardware always seems to be ahead of software

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely true, but if they hadn't released it, we'd likely either be on 32-bit Intel processors still, or we'd have dealt with Microsoft trying to do their first wholesale architecture change-over to move from ia32 (x86) to ia64 (Itanium) on the desktop.

individuals

[mschoolbus]

So the manufacturers with all the driver source code and dedicated teams take much longer than people without the driver source and in their spare time.

I am already running a port of Ice Cream Sandwich on my year old T-mobile G2.

It probably isn't long enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it is unrealistic, but if they tested every app in the Android market for security issues or other issues that might have opened because of the code changes, it would take much longer.

Say what?

[Cereal Box]

In the first Ice Cream Sandwich source code that was released, the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) – the software layer giving applications direct access to the hardware components – was to some extent adapted for a Texas Instruments hardware platform. However, for all 2011 Xperia phones, we used a Qualcomm hardware platform. This means we have to replace the default HAL coming with first source code released for Ice Cream Sandwich, with our own HAL.

The HAL changes have impact on several features on a phone, including the camera, different sensors (such as proximity, light, accelerometer and compass), audio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, as well as multimedia and graphics components. Thus, we do not only have to modify and configure the HAL according to the Qualcomm hardware platform, but also all the other hardware components used in a phone.

Wow, I sure hope they're just mixing up terminology here. The entire point of a HAL is that you just plug in your drivers. If you have to modify the HAL because you're using different hardware than the reference device, you're doing it wrong.

Re:Say what?

[hublan]

The entire point of a HAL is that you just plug in your drivers.

The entire point of the HAL is to abstract hardware, any hardware, away from the OS. There's nothing that says it can't encompass more of the hardware than just the IO bus, CPU and MMU, like WinNT does. On an embedded device there's very little in terms of a standard IO bus that the OS can communicate through cleanly with peripherals, so might as well abstract the whole lot.

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they need a HALAL? ;)

Re:Say what?

[Cereal Box]

Uh yeah, I agree. You abstract away as much hardware as possible. The point is, if Android has a standardized HAL, i.e. standard interfaces for various pieces of hardware like the CPU, GPU, camera, sound, etc. why does Sony feel like they need to replace the HAL *itself* rather than just plug their drivers into the existing HAL?

Re:Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing... read again.

Re:Say what?

[Hast]

Because that's the point of the HAL: Hardware Abstraction Layer. To software running above the HAL everything looks like normal. But the HAL and the stuff underneath make sure that's the case.

Often the drivers will handle the nitty-gritty details of how to communicate with the hardware and the HAL will call the driver (and other systems) to fulfill the API defined by the common HAL interface.

I work with camera stuff, but other systems have similar behavior. So if you're playing a video file you want that to be routed to your super-fast hardware chip. But in order to use it you need the HAL to set it up properly (different chips behave in different ways) and then handle feedback to the UI and stuff like that.

I'd recommend anyone interested in complex computer systems to take a look inside Android. It's way more complex than you'd expect at first. But quite a lot of fun. :-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

When will my phone be like my PC?

[bartoku]

When will I be able to install whatever OS I want on my phone from a flash drive, in the same way I install the OS on my PC?

Now I understand the carriers do not exactly want this and perhaps the manufacturers are not keen on the idea either, but someone stands to benefit from the model and force everyone to follow.

So we have the politics to deal with in some ways, lets talk technical and economic first.

If I can swap a SIM card or forge an ESN then I have a technical solution around the carriers, right?
It seems CDMA may be a bitch, does anyone know if I can technically bring any CDMA phone with the right modem to the likes of Verizon and Sprint without their "help"?

Now we just need a manufacturer willing to make some open hardware, there seems to be a few out there and the Nexus line of phones is not too bad.
But the bootloader and then the driver issues seem like another pain I hear about.
What is the issue there, and what are the solutions?

PCs work with the fabulous x86 BIOS stuff? Just need a Windows or Linux driver then and you are good to go? Can that be possible with the ARM architecture, or is everything wild west and so custom outside of the standards that it will not work that way?

Economics? It will never sell? Everyone expects a $200 on contract phone. These free, as in speech, phones cost to much and no knows they want them except geeks?
Cell phones are a status symbol, they are jewelry?
Oh well, maybe we can get enough of use geeks to buy them. Perhaps people will get fed up with the constant phone upgrading and everything will level out like the PC and notebook PC markets seem to have.

What do these new OSes offer me anyway? Android Froyo sped up my applications with JIT and gave me tethering. After that Gingerbread and the like have just slowed down my Nexus One and offer no new features.
Maybe I do not really need to ability to upgrade the OS on my phone, it is not worth it.

Make an operating system, a kernel does not

[tepples]

A kernel does not an operating system make.

Yoda, is that you?

Yoda would more likely say "Make an operating system, a kernel does not."

There's a difference between Yoda-speak and German-speak. Yoda-speak is OSV (object subject verb; "a fine mess this is") or VOSv (verb, object, subject, helping verb; "help you I will"), in contrast with the SVO or SvVO order of English (and presumably of standard Galactic Basic). The "X does not Y make" pattern is SvOV, as commonly used in German and Dutch and occasionally in English until the early modern (17th century) period. It's an allusion to a Richard Lovelace poem.

The Moar You Know ...:::*

Re:Make an operating system, a kernel does not

[swillden]

A kernel does not an operating system make.

Yoda, is that you?

Yoda would more likely say "Make an operating system, a kernel does not."

There's a difference between Yoda-speak and German-speak. Yoda-speak is OSV (object subject verb; "a fine mess this is") or VOSv (verb, object, subject, helping verb; "help you I will"), in contrast with the SVO or SvVO order of English (and presumably of standard Galactic Basic). The "X does not Y make" pattern is SvOV, as commonly used in German and Dutch and occasionally in English until the early modern (17th century) period. It's an allusion to a Richard Lovelace poem.

The Moar You Know ...:::*

You know, your excellent and informative (if off-topic) post just made me really nostalgic for the days when such were common on slashdot.

Re:Make an operating system, a kernel does not

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, thank you, good sir. I gladly drifted off to Wikipedia to enjoy the poem and to make a permanent note on my database to return to it again.

If it helps anyone, Kierkegaard's quote about men dying for freedom of speech while easily forgoing freedom of though comes to mind.

Have a nice day :)

Re:Make an operating system, a kernel does not

[kju]

Sorry, no. I'm German and I can't find any correct german sentence where "macht" (make) would be at the end. I'm not sure how you got this idea.

German would be "Ein Kernel macht/ist (noch) kein Betriebssystem" translated wordly to "A Kernel makes/is (yet) no operation system".

Re:Make an operating system, a kernel does not

[tepples]

You're right. It's not the same word order as in German, but it does illustrate a process that may be familiar to people from studying German. There appear to be three processes in play, so let me try to explain them all:

Verb-second (V2) word order: Both English and German have SVO word order in main clauses German moves the main verb to the end if there is a helping verb, giving SvOV in contrast to SvVO. English used to as well but no longer does outside poetry. Applying this rule to "stone walls do not make a prison" produces "stone walls do not a prison make". In fact, V2 in German treats an initial adverb phrase as in S position, producing AvSOV: "then went I".

Kein: German is more likely to move the negative into the article of one of the noun phrases than English. (English likewise moves "not" to an article more often than Spanish.) For example, "I will not be an angel" becomes "I will be no angel", and adding the V2 rule to this makes "I will no angel be" as in the Rammstein song.

Not helper: In English, a statement that negates any main verb other than "be" needs at least one helping verb. For example, "makes not" becomes "does not make". There are a few fossilized poetic English phrases that do not trigger this rule, such as "it matters not".

Standard English uses only the not-helper rule. It appears German uses the kein and V2 rules. The widely snowcloned first line of the last stanza of Lovelace's poem uses not-helper and V2. Yoda uses OSV, which is still something else entirely.

Android? Upgrades? You're having a laugh.

[jimicus]

I've been thinking this for some time, and the more I see articles like this (and for that matter Android phones), the more convinced I am that a rapidly evolving platform put together by a company famed for an attitude of "foist a beta onto users, we can always update it later" and the cellphone industry as it stands simply do not mix.

Why don't they mix? Well, think back to a dumb phone - more specifically back to when that was more-or-less your only option.

Every manufacturer had at least 4-6 models available to the general public at any point in time and each model was generally quite different from any others from the same manufacturer available at the same time; each model would be sold for a relatively high price on contract for maybe 9-12 months before being offered at a knockdown price on pay-as-you-go for maybe another 9-12 months before being discontinued. A few were developed down to a price to begin with so they'd only ever be available on pay-as-you-go. Firmware updates were applied by phone stores and were only ever released to correct really bad bugs. 99% of the manufacturer's work on the firmware was completed before the phone was released to the general public; the development team would be on to other things by the time the phone was actually released and wouldn't be taken off to work on bugs in existing firmware unless really necessary. Brand loyalty was virtually non-existent, so there was little point in worrying too much about providing a stellar user experience as long as you didn't actively annoy the user.

AFAICT, most phone manufacturers haven't really changed. Samsung do this, so do Sony Ericsson, so do HTC. But when your business model is based around building phones in this fashion, you can't really make drastic firmware upgrades available for existing models. You'd need to significantly increase the development team simply to get Android working on phones that are already shipping. To what benefit? By the time you've done so on a shipping model, it's just about to be discontinued, its replacement is around the corner and such work will get a return on investment of approximately zero.

ARM is not a PC - yet

[HeikkiK]

Unfortunately the manufacturer is right here. Currently in the ARM world every printed circuit board (PCB) model requires its own kernel version - even if the SoC is the same. Even if the components in the board are exactly the same, a new kernel version is required if the components are just wired differently!

Why is this? Because in the ARM world there is no any universal bus like PCI is in the x86 world. Typically components are connected by using quite primitive buses like I2C or SPI, which has no bulletproof way to do a listing of connected components. Also ARM is heavily power optimized - also in the PCB-level. There are software controlled regulators powering different components ON when needed and OFF to save power. Because there is no any standard way to do this - every manufacturer is designing the powering differently. Power and the communication bus are not connected by any means - powering the component on/off might require using a totally different bus - not told to software by the communications bus. This knowledge is typically just put (hacked) into the kernel code.

In PC world most of the hardware is initialized by BIOS and all the peripherals are usually nicely listed by the PCI bus (try lspci -command in your x86 linux box). Drivers can be easily attached into peripherals by unique device IDs. The same driver works for all boards even if the PCI bus address is different.

No such luxury in the ARM world. Typically you can see multiple versions of drivers for the exacly same component in the Linux kernel source tree. Just because the ARM architecture has brought too many obstacles for developers to easily use the same driver for different boards. You can imagine - it is a total mess. Also typically those drivers do not enter into mainline kernel so there is again more work for phone makers to port drivers for the new kernel version. Also Android kernel has some differences to normal Linux kernel.

Correct me if I'am wrong, but in my understanding the Android HAL-interface is in the user space - not kernel space. The HAL-interface might change a lot between Android versions. But not only the interface has changed - also the kernel space interfaces - those on the top manufacturer have to implement the HAL-interfaces - have changed breaking the existing drivers the manufacturer has made.

But there is hope in the future. Developers of linaro.org have work in progress and already very good demonstrations of how this mess can be sorted out. But we are not there yet and the work is huge. It needs also some common standards and practices to be adopted by the ARM hardware makers.

See also: The Ugly State of ARM Support On Linux http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/06/20/2039229/the-ugly-state-of-arm-support-on-linux

But this ARM-problem is not just related to Linux. Windows Phone 7 is currently working only on Qualcomm SoC, probably because Microsoft wants to keep things simple at this point. Apple has solved the problem by making its own hardware and SoC and probably standardized the hardware in house.

Windows Phone, surprisingly, doesn't have this

[Aqualung812]

I just got a Samsung Focus S Windows Phone 7.5. It came installed with both AT&T and Samsung bloatware.

15 minutes after I had the phone powered on, all of it was gone. I just deleted it.

I came off iPhone because I hated how controlling they were of the OS. I WANT to like Android, but the level of shit I have to deal with to get a bare OS without all of the bloat is more than I want to hobby with on a phone I need to depend on.

Windows Phone, while it has some pretty huge downsides (anemic app selection, limited multi-tasking), has turned out to be the least restrictive of the three. I just didn't see this coming, honestly. I expected to be an Android user.

Re:Windows Phone, surprisingly, doesn't have this

[Totenglocke]

I WANT to like Android, but the level of shit I have to deal with to get a bare OS without all of the bloat is more than I want to hobby with on a phone I need to depend on.

Huh, I wasn't aware buying a Nexus phone was so hard. My friend wanted exactly what you described, so he bought a Nexus S 4G on Sprint and SHAZAM - he had it.

Impatient whipper-snappers

[EngrBohn]

Why do Android upgrades take so long? You're kidding, right? Probably not... about the time that Android 4.0 came out, there was an article about Android 2.3 being "long in the tooth". I bought my Android 2.1 phone in June 2010. Android 2.2 had just come out, but the only things that the 2.2 phones offered over 2.1 were built-in wifi sharing (didn't need), 4G (not available within 300 miles of my home), and a front-facing camera -- and I wasn't going to spend an extra $100 for the front-facing camera. Since then, Android 2.3 came out (December 2010), then 3.0 (February 2011), 3.1 (May), 3.2 (July), and 4.0 (October). Looking back, 2.1 came out in January 2010, and 2.0 in October 2009. Ignoring the tablet-only 3.x, that's still five versions in two years! Even the ten month wait from 2.3 to 4.0 is hardly an eon.

Re:Impatient whipper-snappers

[WiiVault]

To be fair though, I don't think most of the anger comes from missing the minor .1 incremental updates. It is the major ones like 2.3 to 4.0 that have people really bothered. Sure I wish everybody who had 2.0 or .1,.2, and .3 But in reality I'd be happy if my 2.0/1/2/3 phone just got 4.0.

Re:Impatient whipper-snappers

[erice]

To be fair though, I don't think most of the anger comes from missing the minor .1 incremental updates. It is the major ones like 2.3 to 4.0 that have people really bothered.

But if the vendors can't be counted on to provide the .1 updates, which are presumably less involved, what you makes you think current phones will ever get 4.0?

Re:Impatient whipper-snappers

[WiiVault]

Fair point, but I'm just trying to suggest that most consumers are less interested in "bug fix" updates, with a few admitted feature updates, but are instead focused on major feature updates.Don't get me wrong, all updates should be pushed, but I'm a realist on this. Now I'll be the first to admit that most people don't know shit about version numbers, but they do see new features either in their own phones or other peoples. If companies wanna sell an Android 2.1 phone and tell consumers it will stay on that version- fine. I'm cool with that. Its the sales pitch, or even corporate promise of updates that irks me.

Re:Impatient whipper-snappers

[Anonymous Coward]

2.2 added JIT (just in time compiling), a significant performance improvement over the byte code interpreter. Take a look at the benchmarks from phones that had a 2.1->2.2 upgrade and you'll see why people were so impatient, at least for that particular version.

Re:Impatient whipper-snappers

[neminem]

I'd be happy if my 1.6 mp3 player had 2.0 (last I looked, all the apps I wanted to run required at least 2; not so many of them required 3 or 4. But that company really doesn't care, and would like you to simply buy a new device from them, even though the old one works. Well, for certain definitions of working, anyway, that would probably apply equally well to their newer offerings as well. Which I think are still on 2, anyway.)

Hi, Archos! Guess who isn't buying anything from you ever again?

mod parent up!

[WiiVault]

Bravo sir, you pretty much nailed my feelings on almost every phone I've even owned.

One thing Apple got right...

[jonwil]

One of the things Apple does right is that they dont need to go through months of testing with every iPhone-selling carrier on the planet just to release a new iOS update, they can and do release on their own terms.

Other manufacturers need to follow Apple on this and take control over firmware releases.

Re:One thing Apple got right...

[Stupendoussteve]

One of the things Apple does uniquely is creating a relatively unified platform on all of the carriers they support. There are very few examples where Android OEMs have the same hardware on multiple carriers. Of course the carrier-exclusive hardware is caused by the carriers themselves, but it results in a situation where the OEMs have to support all sorts of devices for the various carriers, and it's not just a different case but in most cases very different hardware. Apple has no similar situation to the Motorola Bionic/Photon/Atrix that are very similar hardware but with just enough feature or software differences to force a reinvention of the wheel every time.

Everything wrong with motorola

[JimboFBX]

Can be found here:

https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/55402?start=0&tstart=30

The atrix phone, which "does everything", cannot play music without the sound micro-pausing.
The fix is in faux's kernel. The CPU isn't ramping up fast enough when there is a sudden large cpu load.

What is the #1 cause of random large CPU loads on the atrix? Motoblur. If you break motoblur by signing into a different phone, 95% of the random cpu spikes go away. You're not allowed to have two phones with the same account, so it disables the functionality on your old account. Except the phone seems to work perfectly fine without it. It also reboots a lot quicker with motoblur broke.

If you listen to music your phone will eventually randomly reboot
If Android kills the built in music player app when it is idle to conserve memory, it will go into a state where shuffle is stuck on and your playlist will be corrupted

Motorblur's big feature is that it keeps the state of phone saved.

Except it doesn't. I've gotten 6 phones and in my most recent restore, it was 6 months out of date. My home screen arrangement was old and wrong, and my sticky notes were out of date.
Oh yeah, Motorola doesn't actually test their phones with a working SIM card and motoblur account.

In fact motorola doesn't even turn their phones on for more than 15 seconds. A lot of refurbished phones get sent out with a defective screen that would had been caught if someone actually went to the set-up screen.

Also the hard reinstall only deletes the /data directory, so it will not fix a corrupt upgrade, OS installation, or user who dicked with their phone