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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."
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?)
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
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?
OEMS: I takes time to integrate our own buggy, irremovable software into the kernel.
Summation 2
That's why!
Which I was I bought my phone outright, it's an N900 though.
"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.
Good God, no. I mean, you know what someone will do for a Klondike bar??!?
No more than I have a hard time taking something called "Gingerbread" seriously.
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.
It compiles. What more do you want?
Deleted
No more than an operating system named "Snow Leopard".
More like a long and arduous process of developing dumbass manufacturer interface overlays and bloatware.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
What if the upcoming product is a cancer cure?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
You're welcome.
http://unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com/
it's in my head
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.
If everyone followed your advice Sony would be long gone.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, those only come from 17 year olds, keep up, man!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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.
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 ...:::*
Hell, I can't even stand the phrase "walled garden" anymore.
...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.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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.
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.
I have purchased 5 unsubsidized phones for use on my families T-Mobile phone plane over the last 2 years.
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.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
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.
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bravo sir, you pretty much nailed my feelings on almost every phone I've even owned.
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.
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.
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.
I know HTC provides that tool as well. Why Samsung doesn't? Or is there one of those websites for samsung as well?
Now they're even down-modding my attempt to clarify that I'm not trolling.
I genuinely don't get it.
where is sue? sue is idle.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
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
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.
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.
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.
I like Android phones,less price good quality and features, http://www.ok2phone.com/3g-phones-h7300.html