Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=913045

by spidaman • 16 years ago

284 94 16 years ago

spidaman2• 16 years ago

Some galaxy S handsets have Froyo (see http://pages.samsung.com/ca/froyo/English/?pid=ca_home_subba...) others don't, like my Epic 4g. Is it really politics or QA challenges; no official word has been forthcoming.

yock4• 16 years ago

Your link is to the Canadian site for phones configured for Canadian carriers. Not to be pedantic, but the content of the link is specific to the business practices of US carriers.

oiuhjyftgrdgh• 16 years ago

You mean we are being screwed over LESS than the US for a cellphone?

Oh damn - here comes the apocalypse, lions lying down with lambs, rivers of blood, oceans of fire - Canadians getting good deals on a cellphone.

nollidge• 16 years ago

U.S. Cellular at least just announced it will be rolling out Froyo on a bunch of their phones: http://www.gizmocrunch.com/android/4707-android-froyo-htc-de...

yock4• 16 years ago

This might be plausible, but it can't possibly be confirmed which makes it no better than speculation. I'm as frustrated as the next guy that my Captivate is still running Eclair, but stuff like this doesn't really get us any closer to a solution.

When both carrier and manufacturer neglect to offer explanation or consideration for their collective failure to deliver, they must collectively be held responsible. This means switching carriers when possible and buying from different handset manufacturers. This approach has teeth, but only in large numbers. That's why it's so important to set this silliness aside and focus on real and tangible things the average consumer can do. Focusing on fantastical stories of employees clandestinely posting anonomyous accounts of shady contract terms makes for great drama, but still leaves us without resolution. And quite honestly if it took this story to urge you to action then you weren't all that disappointed in AT&T and Samsung's failure in the first place.

Zaak2• 16 years ago

Summaries of Android upgrades by manufacturer and carrier:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17649/android_upgrades

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17650/android_upgrades_carrie...

tl;dr, Your best bet for upgrades is a high-end HTC phone on Verizon. If you go with Samsung or AT&T, you're out of luck.

spidaman2• 16 years ago

Regarding "It seems safe to say, then -- no big surprise -- that aside from considering a phone's manufacturer, going with a higher profile, top-of-the-line device will improve your odds of receiving regular OS upgrades..." The Epic 4g has been Sprint's flagship phone, still running Eclair. I'm regretting not going with the Evo at times.

yock4• 16 years ago

Those two links are absolutely fantastic!

technomancy• 16 years ago

> Your best bet for upgrades is a high-end HTC phone on Verizon.

Your best bet is a phone that's designed to be rootable. Why put something like that in the hands of the user-hostile carriers?

samstokes• 16 years ago

Surely your best bet is an unlocked phone running vanilla Android, rather than any carrier-customised variant? Every carrier customisation has to be ported to the new version each time the OS gets upgraded.

ecaroth2• 16 years ago

Agreed - but a little transparency on the public front for both Samsung and AT&T would go a long way. I have been on the fence about installing a hacked 2.2 rom on my captivate, but never did because I just had a feeling that the update was coming 'next week'. That was 4 months ago.

diego• 16 years ago

Do it. My Galaxy S with 2.2 is so much better than with 2.1 that it seems like a different phone. It's faster, more stable, the battery lasts longer. I wish I'd done it sooner.

oasisbob• 16 years ago

Yes, everyone should be aware that not everything they read on the internet is true.

As a consumer, this is very useful even without confirmation. If it's true: it explains why some carrier-shipped phones aren't updated. If it's entirely made-up and speculative ... it still might suggest a business reason why carrier-shipped phones aren't updated.

Reminds me of this quote by Thomas Kean:

I remember going over a whole report the FBI gave me, 300 pages, "Classified" stamps all over it. I read the whole thing, 300 pages, with an FBI guy looking over my shoulder. After I was finished I turned to him, [and] I said: "I've read all this in the press! Why is it classified?" And he looked at me and said, "But you didn't know it was true." That was his answer.

w1ntermute2• 16 years ago

> I'm as frustrated as the next guy that my Captivate is still running Eclair, but stuff like this doesn't really get us any closer to a solution.

Maybe you already know, but you can get an unofficial Froyo rom from xda-developers. And before people jump on me about how it won't work for their mom or next-door neighbor - this is just a tip for fellow HNers, in case they didn't know already.

yock4• 16 years ago

Everything I've read is that the UX on the custom roms isn't exactly breathtaking. Am I mistaken?

notirk• 16 years ago

I'm no expert on flashing ROMs but bit the bullet this weekend. Flashed the latest Cognition ROM (3.02) to my Captivate. It was easy to do (for users of HN) and is quite an improvement over stock. I'd recommend owners of Captivates look into it. Take the standard precautions, read up, make backups, etc.

catlike• 16 years ago

> When both carrier and manufacturer neglect to offer explanation or consideration for their collective failure to deliver, they must collectively be held responsible.

No, you can only hold the organization that you have a business relationship with responsible.

ericz• 16 years ago

This is rather heinous. A fee is definitely understandable but a per-device fee is really outrageous. I don't know how carriers were willing to agree in the first place. If they collectively bargained against this before even carrying the phone they probably would've had much more luck.

Although I'm sure Samsung has every right to charge however much they want, perhaps Google could step in and remind them that if they Samsung wants to be greedy they can always use Bada

marshray2• 16 years ago

Gee, I'd kind of liked Samsung because they seemed to focus on delivering good technology at a good price. I'd figured they perceived themselves as something of an underdog in the past (perhaps relative to the Japanese tech industry).

This makes it seem like they're hiring Marketers and MBAs who think the best plan is to try to squeeze as much as they can out of their contract customers (the cell carriers) rather than put as much Samsung awesomeness as possible into the hands of actual happy users. Short-term thinking never gets old.

Maybe it's time to look at HTC.

ScottBurson• 16 years ago

Agreed. I like the Epic's form factor and slide-out keyboard (in fact I'm typing this on a Nokia N810, which is almost exactly the same size) and was excited when I saw it announced. I would probably have bought one by now if it had Froyo. But watching Samsung's behavior around this upgrade has turned me off completely.

Maybe with Swype on an Evo I wouldn't miss the physical keyboard.

mikeryan• 16 years ago

I'd figured they perceived themselves as something of an underdog in the past

They don't. Samsung is an 800lb Gorilla in the CE space. They are the biggest seller of HDTV's in the US (though Vizio is closing fast) and the second largest manufacturer of cell phones worldwide.

Samsung is also starting to throw its weight around a lot.

marshray2• 16 years ago

Well if they're not careful they could end up being Sony minus the videogame and music business units.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

In fairness to Samsung they do incur non-trivial cost doing this.

Imagine this situation Verizon says, "Our Samsung Galaxy S phone must get 2.2" while Sprint says, "No need". Should Sprint have to pay for what Verizon is getting?

The issue is that you're going to pay, whether its Samsung or HTC. Some companies will build the price into the phone, others will price it in some other way (or some companies could eat the cost -- but that's probably not sustainable).

Charging directly to the end user seems like the best way to do it. If I want 2.2, then I should pay for it, and if I'm happy with 2.1 why should I pay for other people to get 2.2? But short of that, charging the carriers makes sense.

jsz02• 16 years ago

The biggest downside I see is that it will shackle Google's ability to move the platform forward. For example 2.3 is reported to include some major improvements for low latency audio. As a game developer how do you handle this? Just ignore this 2.3-only feature and target 2.1? Or do you build a 2.1 and 2.3 version? 2.2? 3.0? 3.1? Unfortunately we're talking about these phones being around for another 2-3 years at minimum so realistically you might be asking a developer to support 2.1 3 years from now? That's going to be a really tough sell. The other issue is security. Leaving all those old versions out there with little or no post-release updating is just begging for trouble. (and let's not forget about bug fixes -- no one wants to suffer 2 years working around an annoying bug. They simply won't buy another Android phone after a bad experience like that)

ergo986• 16 years ago

The conflicting interests issue is really a problem in the Android space. As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press.

Naturally people are going to compare it to iOS, where updates are free and rapidly disseminated. The difference there is that there definitely is something in it for Apple -- they're getting a cut of every app you buy, every song you download, etc. They're a middleman, so it's just a cost of doing business.

I wish we could get to a point where Android updates cost money. I would happily pay $30 or whatever for each major update if it motivated the vendor to have an interest in keeping it up to date.

mindslight2• 16 years ago

> I would happily pay $30 or whatever for each major update if it motivated the vendor to have an interest in keeping it up to date.

That would just be a different user-hostile incentive. The path forward is for Android to actually become consumer open source (GPL3). Let device manufacturers concentrate on shipping hardware and adding any new device drivers to a public repository. Updates can then be directly applied by eager users, or eventually pushed out by carriers with minimal integration effort. Proprietary "value adds" like SenseUI can still be done through the package system.

ergo986• 16 years ago

That would just be a different user-hostile incentive.

How so? It aligns interests in virtually every way.

ergo986• 16 years ago

Just as one aside on this, it's pretty clear by now that it isn't simply a matter of doing a source control get and the vendor's work is done.

Aside from simply having technical insight into the individual ROMs, you needn't look further than the disaster that has been Sony Erricson and Dell's Android entrants to see the truth in this -- those vendors came out with devices running dated Android versions, turning possible winners into catastrophic losers, eviscerating sales of the Streak and X10.

If they could have just done a merge and they were done, obviously they would have.

So now we're getting to the point where it seems that makers like Motorola and HTC have started to build up a significant Android talent pool, and that bodes well. Despite the constant incantations that Android is free, I wouldn't be surprised if the in-house development costs rivaled or exceeded what something like Windows Mobile cost to license.

1010011010• 16 years ago

"I wouldn't be surprised if the in-house development costs rivaled or exceeded..."

I wonder how much of those costs go into Sense, Motoblur, Touchwiz, etc. Shipping stock android is surely less labor-intensive.

qjz• 16 years ago

I got an X10 for free with upgrade over the holidays and love it. It makes me wonder if all the talk about version upgrades is mere noise. I'm relieved not to be affected by the Android SMS bug in Froyo, so will happily wait until it is fixed. Even if my phone ever sees an upgrade to Eclair, I probably won't notice with AT&T's customizations, which I like quite a bit. It's funny to hear the X10 described as a loser when I like it more than the iPhone. Oh, well, I liked XP more than Vista, too.

evilduck2• 16 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the in-house development costs rivaled or exceeded what something like Windows Mobile cost to license.

That implies that Windows Mobile doesn't require similar in-house effort, on top of the OEM license fees. Windows phones still require the same hardware driver development effort, and WM7 is already starting to receive the carrier-bastardization treatment. I'd say Android's licensing being free is the only difference.

jsz02• 16 years ago

I might pay $30 for a major update but simply going from 2.1 to 2.2 or 2.3? Absolutely not. There aren't enough new features to justify this. The idea of mostly paying for bug fixes is totally unacceptable to me. I'll throw my SmartPhone in the garbage and go back to whatever free-with-contract junk phone they offer before I get held hostage for security and bug fixes.

fakespastic2• 16 years ago

Perhaps future Android devices should have universal upgradeability, and all the carrier has to do is update a table enabling the upgrade for your device - at your own risk. I'd be willing to take it.

drivebyacct24• 16 years ago

> As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press.

Then stop locking the bootloader and let me put the latest version of CM on my phone. I'm not going to buy Motorola and I'm not going to buy Samsung. Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running on the Galaxy S devices... Motorola is keeping the bootloader (and thus kernel) on their phones restricted. They're also not even close to timely on their updates. My D1 is running Gingerbread fairly stably, especially considering it's ONE maintainer disappeared two weeks ago due to personal financial concerns. OTOH, only one device is running GB from the manufacturer/carrier and that is Google's own phone.

Let me use my damn phone, I'll take care of the updates. I don't know how much simpler we can make installing CM7 and I know there are some/many/random-number people who have gone CM just to get the latest Android version.

joeyo2• 16 years ago

  > Samsung won't release their kernel modifications for
  > Froyo which are needed by the CM team to get CM7 running
  > on the Galaxy S devices

Isn't this a violation of the GPL?

rufugee3• 16 years ago

Really? Does this howto (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Compile_Cyanogen...) not get CM7 running on the Vibrant?

machrider• 16 years ago

This story was the one that broke the camel's back for me, in terms of waiting for Samsung/T-Mobile to ship a 2.2 update for the Vibrant. I dug around and found "Eugene's Ginger Clone" 2.2 ROM and installed it yesterday. My Vibrant is noticeably snappier, battery is lasting longer, and it's now devoid of bloatware.

Latest release announcement here: http://eb-productions.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=samsungs...

Video overview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCKsiH0wWgg

lwhi3• 16 years ago

"As has been shown time and time again, vendors really don't want the burden of keeping your handset up to date forever because there is nothing in it for them, aside from perhaps avoiding too much negative press."

The reality is a lot more depressing; the vendors actually want you to buy a new phone.

If your current phone can run the latest version of Android - why would you bother ... ?

ergo986• 16 years ago

True to a point, but they don't have the luxury of assuming that you'll buy from them. Not upgrading their devices works against a repeat consumer, really, so you're just as, if not more, likely to help the bottom line of one of their competitors if they leave you in the cold.

And of course there's the march of progress, and the nexus one of one year ago is now outmatched by almost all devices with better screens, dual cameras, coming dual core processors and much better GPUs, etc.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

Depressingly true, but there's a flip side:

- Brand loyalty. Apple's fans are die-hard partly because Apple doesn't (often) screw their users. You can expect timely (even major) updates to your iPhone for quite some time after release. When's the last time someone reported that they won't buy anything but LG/Samsung/Motorola?

- Apple also loves having you on the upgrade cycle. The difference is that these have been largely driven with hardware changes. Retina display, new styling, front-facing camera, GPS unit, 3G connectivity... etc.

There's no reason why Samsung, LG, Motorola et al cannot follow this model.

periferral• 16 years ago

this seems to make very little sense. most of the custom ROMs out there are based on Samsung's leaked 2.2 ROMs. If Samsung really didn't want to send out official updates for 2.2 they could stop the leaks and would kill XDA updates.

Also judging by the updates trickling in, there is still a lot of work being put in by Samsung to makes these ROMs stable. Almost every leaked ROM has issues. lag fixes and gps fixes on XDA seem to be the norm to work around them

mtarnovan• 16 years ago

This is a very unhealthy trend for Android. Development will be much more costly and difficult if the user base is split across many different API levels. This article contains some insight (if you can get past the bs title...): http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/

fakespastic2• 16 years ago

I own an Evo 4G (Android 2.2) and my wife owns an Epic 4G (2.1). I have noticed no difference in their usability at all, aside from a few hardware-specific quirks. I'm somewhat indifferent to the Android dot-releases, and am not seeing much in Gingerbread that I care too much about, either, aside from the improved task management.

rufugee3• 16 years ago

Just bought a Vibrant last week. After all the reported issues...I'm on the fence on whether to return it. It's a beautiful phone and seems faster than my Droid 2...even running Eclair. Still, the GPS is weak to non-existent at times, and although I can upgrade the phone myself I'd rather have an official version. Ugh.

rbanffy• 16 years ago

Sadly, this doesn't explain why my Cliq XT (called Quench down here) will be forever stuck with 1.5.

At least until I decide to crack it and do the upgrade myself. As soon as I find a 1.6+ or 2.x image that pleases me.

teye• 16 years ago

I've been planning to give up my iPhone for a 4G VZW Android, but it's easy to take a direct update channel for granted.

So, iOS 4 has 90 percent share amongst iOS device owners. What about Android 2.3? 0.4 percent, as of a couple weeks ago. Yes, that’s zero point four percent.

But for the sake of this being slightly more fair, let’s compare iOS 4 to Android 2.2 — an OS which came out well before iOS 4. The adoption rate there? 51.8 percent. That’s still pretty pathetic.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/17/ios-android-breakdown/

icarus_drowning2• 16 years ago

As an Android user (and promoter to my friends/family), I'm starting to get worried about Google's approach to the product. Not because of "fragmentation" (which to me is an argument that essentially says "Android isn't going to ever be successful because its too successful now"), but because of the lack of attention it seems to be getting from Google.

It isn't just the OS itself-- several of Google's own apps are getting buggier and buggier. Voice worked fine when I first got my Droid a year or so ago, but has had a lot of bugs-- including dialing random numbers instead of the one I wanted. (Just yesterday, I tried to send a text message to XXX-XXXX and it truncated the last digit of the first group and complained that it couldn't send a text to XX-XXXX. Nothing I did could stop it from doing this except using the web-based version). Google Listen has stopped refreshing for huge numbers of people, and my wife's new Galaxy S won't even accept subscriptions. Not a word from Google on either issue, even though both show up in searches for the problem.

I had to install Launcher Pro to get any kind of performance out of my Droid, and even then it occasionally locks up on the home screen. Sometimes calls come in and the touch interface freezes, which means that I can't answer the phone. The Droid also will occasionally decide that there is no data connection when it has full 3G service according to the indicators.

I don't use it, but the stock SMS app has apparently has its own problems too-- at least Google has acknowledged those and is working on a fix, but as a whole, Android has gone from less technologically interesting (no wi-fi hotspots, etc) and stable to exciting and really buggy. Combine that with this kind of politicking, and I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about Android every day.

potatolicious2• 16 years ago

> "at least Google has acknowledged those and is working on a fix"

That's of little comfort. The bug report was dismissed and deprioritized for a long time before pressure from the public/internet forced Google to prioritize it and ship a fix.

If Google can't even prioritize and fix critical bugs like this without the blogosphere getting all up in their business... what hope does Android have?

fleitz• 16 years ago

There's just one hole in your plan. The more bugs you have on your phone the more searches it generates :)

EnigmaCurry• 16 years ago

To be fair, Listen isn't an official google project, it's a 20% project, and the devs that started it probably just got bored with it, and/or busy.

http://groups.google.com/group/listen-discuss/browse_thread/...

icarus_drowning2• 16 years ago

Good point.

I think Listen's bugginess would only be mildly irritating if more critical (and official) Google apps like Voice didn't have almost-dealbreakers cropping up so often.

henriklied• 16 years ago

I don't think that's relevant. Most Android users have no idea it's a 20% project. It's an app that's available on their phones.

ralphc• 16 years ago

This doesn't bode well for my Galaxy Tab running Froyo, hoping for Gingerbread and Honeycomb one day.

jorgem• 16 years ago

Impromptu poll: Who really thinks a diatribe like this from TechCrunch can make Google or their carriers do anything different?

old-gregg• 16 years ago

Somewhat related: how/when do we get Gingerbread on Nexus One?

Charuru• 16 years ago

Great info, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking that this sort of leak really puts the pressure on Samsung and is highly advantageous to the carriers.

tworats• 16 years ago

If this turns out to be true Samsung just lost a customer for life. This is just plain stupid, short sighted thinking.

pieter• 16 years ago

It's interesting how this works in the Dutch market: the Galaxy S phones aren't carrier-branded here (they're all called Galaxy S). On phone sites, you can select the phone first, and then choose for a contract from any of the 3 main carriers. It also means that when Samsung ships an update, you can use that update for your phone, whichever carrier you're on.

Samsung released Froyo in November, and you can install it on any Galaxy S phone bought here. The update isn't over the air though; you have to connect your phone to your pc, and which auto-updates it. In any case, the carriers have nothing to do with this update so any delays are purely Samsung's fault.

Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1

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