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Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab Won't Get Android 4.0
bonch writes "Samsung has announced that the Galaxy S smartphone, which sold 10 million last year, and the Galaxy Tab tablet won't be receiving the Android 4.0 update, known as 'Ice Cream Sandwich.' Samsung claims the devices lack enough RAM and ROM to run Android 4.0 alongside TouchWiz and other custom 'experience-enhancing' software. Note that the Galaxy S runs the same hardware as the Nexus S, which is already receiving the Android 4.0 update."
Unless there is an effort to actively block the porting of 4.0 to these devices, there is likely to be an unofficial port.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
upgrade your old phone, sheeple.
If you want upgrades don't get a phone with these extras on top. Touchwiz, Sense and Blur all suck and all prevent phones from being updated. Vote with your dollars.
I will be getting a Galaxy Nexus as soon as it is 199 or below, I won't pay more for a phone on contract.
From Éclair to Froyo to Gingerbread, and went through a total of 7 relatively major update
That's all I expected from the phone when I got it, tbh.
Sorry to be a downer but lets face it, once Samsung or another hardware manufacturer collects your money, you're on your own.
That's a big reason why iOS device owners have ALWAYS ranked their satisfaction much higher than Droid users.
Sorry but that's the truth.
TouchWiz? Sounds like a GUI for paedophiles.
How did their marketing department ever let that one out? Its almost as bad as HP using that Gary Glitter song "Touch Me" for their touchscreen PC advertisements.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Who cares if your phone doesn't support some "official" OS that the MAN says you can or cannot have in his walled garden? The beauty of open source is that YOU can write your own operating system. Just fire up vi/emacs, write whatever YOU want to write, and then use gcc to compile it into YOUR personal OS. That's the POWER of open source.
Regarding this line:
>> "Note that the Galaxy S runs the same hardware as the Nexus S, which is already receiving the Android 4.0 update."
Yes, the Nexus S has ICS; I'm running it on my Nexus S, and it's fantastic. However, you can really, really feel the fact that the phone only has 512 MB of RAM. If you open a memory intensive app (web browser, for example), pretty much everything else gets swapped out; when you next press Home, you have to wait a second or two for the launcher to be restarted, or worse, for the keyboard to load.
Since TouchWiz would add even more bloat, I can totally see how 512 MB just won't cut it.
When a new version of iPhone came out, a new version of iOS came out alongside it and the old phones just weren't able to run it smoothly. (Everything worked but using the phones felt sluggish) People using the old phones with the new OS version were generally a bit annoyed and said "Fine. I guess I'll need to buy a new phone". I think that's exactly the kind of situation Samsung tried to avoid here.
Sure, you could say "They should provide the update and then have large signs 'We recommend you never install this, but if you want to make your device sluggish, so be it'...". I might even agree there (more freedom to use my device as I wish is always nice) but I don't think any less of Samsung if they can't be bothered with that.
Ideal case would be if they had the option to upgrade but would also offer option to revert the upgrade... but I don't know if there are any technical restrictions involved there.
taking the comments from Samsung (which are probably bull) at face value, that just means the crap Samsung adds to their android phone are bloated softwares.
Phone are simply starting to feel what IBM felt long ago with PC. Phone hardware is becoming more of a commodity with minor differences while the key parts are software. If phone makers can't find a way to make succeed/money in this new environment, they will ultimately fail. And that basically include having good software that preferably unique, and making money through that front from selling a phone with that unique software to possible extended support fees for updates (no one said phone upgrades had to be free, servers cost money along with human effort).
Run a search for i9000 in there >_
The Galaxy S, which is the subject of this article, was released in June 2010. The original iPhone was released in 2007.
Because millions of people buy a phone that doesn't work?
Apple built a platform for their ideas, Google built one for everyone's.
I just do not understand how companies like Samsung expect that any publicity from such a move would be positive? I mean, how?
What that would have done is to engage services of folks like these, who churn out credible software. These folks would do all the heavy lifting for a what is pocket change to Samsung.
Samsung, please be serious.
When they say "devices lack enough RAM and ROM to run Android 4.0 alongside TouchWiz and other custom 'experience-enhancing' software", what they really mean is "Buy one of our new phones or get nothing". My question is, does Apple have a patent for "Creating expensive hardware which will be replaced within 6 months and will never work right with upgrades"? I see a suit coming on.
The iPhone 3G was released in July 2008 and discontinued in June 2010. Its successor, the 3Gs was released in June 2009 and is still being sold; it can run iOS 5 except for Siri, which is an iPhone 4s feature. The Galaxy S, which is the subject of this article was release in June 2010.
Remove Carrier IQ from the phones to free up memory resources!
Get yours here. I'm sure there are others, but this is the one I found first.
Does Samsung have any adequate reason not to update?
What a shame. Not that I care.
we're not attempting to coerce people into buying a new device!
I was actually going to buy a Galaxy Tab 7 "plus" along with a car dock for it next week, looks like I'll have to find a different tablet, or wait for CyanogenMod to come up with a hack before I buy it.
Samsung, drop TouchWiz, it sucks anyway.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
This comment is being composed on a Nexus S purchased last year. A couple days ago an official release was of 4.0 was installed.
I can't believe no one else got it. Was this what prompted the announcement?
Your doing it wrong!
The idea that a carrier can lock me into a device that at some point be a second class citizen while I'm still locked in is unreasonable. Of course, you can still use the device as originally advertised, but that's not the point.
What if Dell or Apple sold you a computer today that couldn't support an OS upgrade in 12 months? (Granted, they don't subsidize but I suspect that in 12-18 months you've hit the break-even on the phone)
Remember that the iPhone 3GS, release 2 1/2 years ago, will run iOS 5.0.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
This is the #1 reason (and really only one necessary) for me to stick with my iOS enabled devices. These devices are only a few months old and cannot be upgraded?! Seriously?! I'm done considering a switch to Android.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
I just ditched my Epic 4G for an iPhone for this exact reason. I was able to root my Epic and put 4.0 on it myself just fine but Samsung refuses to push out software themselves. I will never again buy another Samsung product (I know Apple uses their parts, doesn't matter).
At least my iPhone will get some friggin updates from time to time and not come pre-loaded with CIQ. I was a diehard Android fan but the fragmentation and piss poor support of the handset developers has pushed me over to Apple. Enough is enough with this shit.
Google, Samsung, HTC, Motorola have all fucked their customers enough at this point that I can't imagine a situation in which I would ever hand over my money for one of their products again.
Some of us do like these UIs. I happen to like Sense, and that's why I bought my Inspire 4G (aka Desire HD). :)
It's running a ROM (RCMix3D Runny 4.0) that is Android 2.3.5 (which is later than official for my phone) and retains Sense 3.5 (which is also later than official).
I could have easily picked a ROM without Sense as well, like MIUI or Cm7, etc.
And yeah, there's people working to port ICS to the Desire HD line, too. Haven't decided if I want it, yet.
Get off my launchpad!
OK. That is good for you. Many people just want the device to work, and don't care about tinkering. To them it's like buying a toaster or other appliance, and that is perfevtly OK. It does not make them stupid, or "sheeple" or any of the other petty insults the nerd community loves to toss out. The geekverse really needs to accept this and move on, and stop comparing such devices to Orwellian bogeymen, because, honesty, it sounds completely batshit insane. Maybe more people need to actually read 1984.
If you are going to write your own OS, you can install it on whatever hardware you want, iPhone, Galaxy, whatever.
Sadly most people don't have the time or desire to do this. They want a nicely supported device with timely updates to run the latest apps, etc.
This is rather disappointing - I received a Galaxy Tab as a bonus from my job earlier in the year, and I was expecting it to receive the ICS update - the fact that it's not going to I find rather strange...
I really wish all the manufacturers would simplify their product line up. Too many models to keep track of.
that their licensing agreement with Microsoft, as Barnes & Nobel revealed when they refused to sign the NDA, prohibits them from upgrading to more recent versions of Android. This would lock them into an aging release, which would kill their future sales. With no where is to turn, they would be forced to put WinP7 on their hardware, which is the whole purpose of Microsoft's extortion.
In other news, Nokia's Lumina, their smartphone running Win7, was essentially ignored by consumers after its recent release. Microsoft has spent more than $500 Million in branding and marketing of WinP7, but not to worry. They've used worthless IP to extort about that much in "license fees" from vendors putting Android on their hardware.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Crossing Samsung off my list of stuff to get.....................Hello Apple!
And a HUGE number of galaxy S owners do not HAVE carrier bundles installed at all anyway!!
While I'm angry about the short update cycle your comparison is a bit of a stretch. Let's make it generic.
%Phone% recently received %Update% except for %Killer Feature%
Killer feature in this case could be ICS, or it could be Siri. Neither of these upgrades are required to run every app that exists in either market at this point. Heck from a usability point of view if you strip out faceunlock and the inbuilt usage meter there's very little that ICS adds to the device that Gingerbread didn't already have, just a few graphic changes, and a shitload of under the hood stuff. iOS5 is a bit different. From what I can tell it's got a large number of very different features from usability to previous iOS devices such as the notification bar.
The way I see it you 3Gs does not run the latest and greatest because it's missing Siri, a feature which it is quite capable of running. That makes it no better than the Galaxy S which is missing ICS, a feature which it is quite capable of running. Otherwise both phones are 100% compatible with all phone apps on their respective market.
I bought one of these yesterday!
Okay fellow Slashdotters, please indulge me and consider the following scenario...
My personal phone is an HTC HD2 that originally shipped with Windows Mobile 6.5, but I installed MagLDR and one of the CyanogenMod derivatives.
My work phone is a Verizon Droid Incredible 2 that is running VirtuousUnity, a modded ROM with HTC Sense 3.5.
My dad's phone is a T-Mobile G2 that has not been modified in any way. While it does have a few T-Mobile specific applications on it, it's still a mostly-stock build and doesn't have HTC Sense on it.
My dad used to be pretty tech savvy back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, but his tech knowledge hasn't progressed much since then. He very frequently asks relatively simple questions about his phone.
While all three phones technically run Android, they're still very different to him. He can mostly figure out my HD2, but dialing looks a bit different since I use a third party dialing application. The SenseUI phone looks extremely different and he has to ask how to do things all over again.
Many of the responses here have been something to the effect of "...so why doesn't Samsung just ditch Touchwiz?" The answer to that is simple: to most people, the UI matters a LOT more than the underlying code. The overwhelming majority of apps I've used run on Android 2.1 or later, which is basically every phone still in active use among the friends, family, and clients that I'm aware of, so app compatibility issues are rather trivial. The real issue is that most people would be more confused going from TouchWiz 2.3 to a plain 4.0 UI than they would if they simply left well enough alone. While the Slashdot crowd is generally more comfortable rooting and modding, I'd assume that the millions of Samsung Galaxy S owners are probably NOT slashdotters, do NOT have their phones' xda-devs subforum on their RSS feeds to watch for new releases on their ROMs. They didn't learn how to use *Android*, they learned how to use *their phone*, which runs Touchwiz.
As an analogy, most of the people who own Android phones would notice a bigger difference by going from Ubuntu to Xubuntu than they would by going between Ubuntu running GNOME 2.32 and PC-BSD running GNOME 2.32.
I've run some of the early builds of ICS on my HD2, and I personally don't like it. I like having the "endless vertical scrolling wall of apps", instead of this page-by-page multiple walls of apps nonsense. The soft buttons are understandable except that most phones have some sort of soft button alternative, which makes that space redundant. The menus are in different places, fonts can be hard to read in some screens, and some of the settings have been rearranged. Now once these builds get more mature (and get camera drivers, since strangely none of my HTC phones have working cameras) I'll probably migrate over, but the average user "just figured out how to use their phone" and will be worse off with a 4.0 build than they will by sticking with their meticulously customized home screens.
I've never touched my whiz while eating an ice cream sandwich. Is that some sort of Korean thing?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Well, who cares what Samsung does? ICS *IS* already available for the Galaxy S (http://www.theandroidsoul.com/android-4-0-update-for-galaxy-s-i9000-custom-rom/). That's actually the beauty and major difference compared to iOS: even if the original manufacturer proves to be a dickhead, you are free to upgrade your phone from other sources, and that often proves to be a major improvement over the original software too..
RFS is just FAT32. Really, it's the bad old FAT32 from DOS with support for Unix permissions thrown in.
So it's BAD BAD BAD. ext4 is way better for SD cards.
Samsung has a history of not upgrading its Android phones. I got a Samsung Moment the day it came out (November 2009), and Samsung stopped updating the phone less than a year after it was released. It's ridiculous to have a 2 year contract on a phone and not get the newer versions of Android that come out during the 2 year period, unless there is a hardware based issue for not being able to upgrade. I ended up rooting my phone and getting an update from the xda developer forum. but it's ridiculous that I'd even have to do that.
The Moment also a GPS issue, which relates to poor hardware design. I decided I'm never getting a Samsung phone after this whole experience, especially when friends who had a Motorola Droid or other similar phones were getting the new versions of Android pretty soon after they were released. I get the impression Samsung just wants you to go buy a new phone every year, and don't care at all at keeping the existing users happy. Nothing tells people they made the wrong choice like EOL'ing a product that is less than a year old.
Not from samsung. But yeah, of course you will from other people, as other comments mention, there are already early builds for the SGS, never mind SGS2 (where samsung have promised a touchwiz-mangled-ICS officially).
Touchwiz is probably considered a "value add" by Samsung. Unlike HTC's thing, in my experience a lot of people genuinely seem to like touchwiz and buy samsung phones here (I'm in Ireland though, maybe we're just the koreans of europe).
Critically, note that the touchwiz ui also appears on samsung's non-android phones. I think that's something a lot of android people don't realise. They aren't going to get rid of it lightly, and hey, you know, they do actually make the galaxy nexus too for the "pure android" experience.
You see, the advanced users who may not like touchwiz won't be put off a phone by the need to reflash to get unmangled or at least better-modded (cough cyanogenmod cough) android (I know I got an SGS2 anyway, still has those lovely hardware specs), but it's the casual non-geek users who rote-learn the touchwiz ui actions for samsung phones and have brand loyalty because phones always work roughly the same way. They would be VERY put off by the samsung phone not working roughly the same way as their old samsung phone i.e. the touchwizzy way (though honestly it isn't nearly as different from upstream android as some people make out anyway). You know the sort, they're put off from linux or macosx merely because it looks and works a bit different to windows, they are not intrigued by the novelty and interested to learn a different way, even if it's better (as IMO some linux desktops have been for a while).
Samsung aren't idiots, even if they want to phase out touchwiz, they need to slooooowly change over time to drag the nongeek people toward the standard android ui (while helping the standard ui become more touchwizzy - it bemuses me to see some android fanboys cheering on features in ICS that came from touchwiz while denigrating touchwiz).
Who exactly are you responding to? I haven't seen a single post along those lines in the entire discussion. You are just making a strawman.
It is wonderful that technology has progressed so fast. Memory/storage is still the one area that amazes me, despite keeping up on things. My favourite visual example is a tiny little SDHC card sitting next to a VHS tape. The SDHC card holds around the same amount of video as a T-180 VHS tape (about 3 hours) but is full HD, and just minuscule by comparison. In my lifetime we have gone from those massive tapes to that tiny card for home recording. It is a wonderful advance in storage.
So I think it is great that phones have tons of RAM, and use it. Gives us nice, pretty, graphical interfaces with all kinds of features. There is a reason things like the C64 operated from a real basic interface: You didn't want more of the memory being used by the OS than had to, there wasn't much of it. Now we can spend memory on nice things.
All these advances make for a better computing experience. Another one that has happened in my lifetime with regards to media, and also multi-tasking, related to MP3s. I remember in 1995-1996 when I first became aware of MP3s and started messing with them. My system could only handle full 44.1khz stereo playback of MP3s if I dropped to DOS and used Cubic Player. It took 100% of my 486's resources to handle that. In Windows, the overhead from the OS and task switching was too much, I had to drop the playback rate. Now? I can play them using less than 1% of one core in my computer. They are something I can do in the background anytime without thinking about it.
It's progress, and it is great.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just updated my Galaxy S to Gingerbread last week. Not a major change, but seems to a little better all over. The only incompatibility warning I got was that Doubletwist would no longer be running constantly...an app I had no use for, didn't want, and could not get rid of without rooting.
You know XDA, Modaco or some other site will port it. Just because the manufacturer won't, doesn't mean it won't get it. It is just that the majority of users probably could care less if it has the latest & greatest. Also, it goes against the business model of most manufacturers, carriers, to update their devices. Why would anyone go out and get a new device, if they can update it with all the latest bells & whistles. I know my just now retired Dell Streak (Just got a Galaxy Note, it smokes the streak), came with Android 1.6....Between Dell & at&t, the 2.x release was VERY late in coming, so I just rooted it and did it myself. When Gingerbread came along, I didn't update mine. After reading countless stories of this rom works except for this, or that rom works except for that, I just left it alone with a customized official 2.2.2 I just don't think the hardware was up for it, which, is a small way is what Samsung is saying...perhaps the older version doesn't have the necessary resources to handle ICS.
Ah, bloatware/malware/adware.
One more vendor to avoid.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's faster than any official Samsung ROM, has good battery life and everything is working (apart from Wi-Fi tethering, which too will probably be fixed soon).
Details here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1398223.
(I'm not affiliated with it of course, just a happy user).