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This is tangentally related, but I'm going to break my contract with Verizon after buying a Motorola Devour in March. I believe that Motorola and VZW have brok

This is tangentally related, but I'm going to break my contract with Verizon after buying a Motorola Devour in March. I believe that Motorola and VZW have broken an implied promise to support my Android phone through the update cycle; it shipped with 1.6 and it appears that the powers that be have decided that it's not worthy of the engineering resources to get it up to 2.2, so it'll be at 1.6 forever. I'm sorry, but a three-month old phone should not be obsolete. If I get a iPhone 4, I have every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that subsequent iOS upgrades work on my phone until there's a legitimate technical reason to exclude it, not some bullshit profit/loss maximization algorithm. The Android ecosystem will remain fragmented because every single phone+manufacturer+carrier combination requires a decision and engineering resources to upgrade. I could never recommend an Android phone to anyone but the anti-Apple hordes.

Splines 16y ago
> If I get a iPhone 4, I have every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that subsequent iOS upgrades work on my phone until there's a legitimate technical reason to exclude it,... Kudos to Apple for doing this, by the way. I have an iPhone 3G and really appreciate Apple's efforts in keeping my device up-to-date. Apple's decision to own the phone from end-to-end (sans AT&T) has proven to provide a high-quality experience to customers. It's telling that the only part of the experience that Apple doesn't own is arguably the largest pain point of the iPhone. It's too bad that Android/WinMo answer to the OEMs, and not the other way around. If Compaq or Dell dictated upgrade policies for PCs the world would be a very different place.
- aston 16y ago
  Here's a fun factoid: your iPhone 3G (and mine) will totally miss out on iOS4's multi-tasking. If Apple is better than Motorola/Verizon in terms of keeping older hardware up-to-date, it's not by much.
  - czhiddy 16y ago
    I imagine iOS4 multitasking on a 128mb device would be horrible. The OS has grown with every release; there's probably even less memory for apps to work with in 4.0. I think Apple would rather see complaints of not supporting the 3G rather than scathing reviews of how poorly it performs. No updates for a 3 month old phone is quite a large difference from leaving a hardware-limited feature out of an update to a 2 year old device.
    - megablast 16y ago
      Another interesting point, the new iPhone 4 has 512mb ram, the 3GS and iPad have 256mb. A lot of people think it was strange to put only 256mb in the iPad. Just wondering what sort of stuff the new iPhone 4 will get that the ipad will not. Hopefully it is just more memory for video related stuff, and will not hold back any new upgrades for the ipad.
      - pietrofmaggi 16y ago
        The iPad is an older project, when it started, on single task iPhoneOS 3.2, 256MB of RAM was the "right amount". Now with iOS4, simil-multitasking and a lot of video to edit, 256MB seems just a bit to tight. We have to wait and see if the release of the iOS4 for the iPad will bring come new hardware with it.
        masklinn 16y ago
        Yeah but though I expect the iPad project was a closely guarded secret within Apple, iOS 4 likely wasn't, and the iPhone 4 was probably less of a secret than the pad. Why the iPad team didn't get any hints as to the amount of RAM to put in the thing is beyond me, especially as there are already reports of RAM-limitation issues on the pad (e.g. where iPhone 3gs Safari can keep half a dozen tabs around without reloading them all the time, iPad is apparently unable to)
- nlawalker 16y ago
  My 3G became dog slow as a dog when I installed the software that was released alongside the 3GS. It has been ever since, through every following upgrade.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    I noticed my 3G seemed to start getting slower, have more frequent "world has come to a stop" pauses right around when the 3GS came out. I wondered a bit if it was a conspiracy of sorts, something intentional Apple did to make the non-3GS models seem even slower than they were. Not sure, of course, or whether a coincidence. But it's interesting to hear at least one other person noticed this.
    - allend 16y ago
      It's almost surely your imagination, even if other people have had the same experience. By the way, I have the same experience.
SandB0x 16y ago
Double-tangentially related. My contract with Vodafone (UK) is up for renewal soon and there's the HTC Wildfire, Nexus One, Desire, Legend, Tattoo listed on the website. Just to be clear, this is attempting to narrow it down to one carrier, one manufacturer, one operating system. How about a clear flagship model and a budget option rather than all this shitty confusion? Then maybe you'll have the engineering resources to keep the two or three models up to date. This is similar to my laptop rant the other day. It's sad to see companies shooting themselves in the foot.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Agreed that they're making things way more complicated than they should be. As far as the parent poster, I have no idea why the Devour even exists; it's inferior to the Droid in every way. In your case the Nexus One is clearly the way to go; nothing else is significantly better spec-wise, and being Google's "official" model it's guaranteed to get updates first.
- usaar333 16y ago
  In your specific case, the only clear "dumb" redundancies are the wildfire and legend (the differences seem trivial). And yes, I agree, it makes little sense for HTC to be making such similar models. The Desire is the flagship (to htc), the tattoo is the low-end budget and the legend/wildfire is mid-range. All of the other models HTC makes seem to be due to deals with carriers/other companies. The Nexus One is a google-branded phone sans sense. The Sprint hero had changes from the regular due to Sprint. The last goes on. I imagine HTC is somewhat forced into this position. They don't have enough market power, so if a carrier wants something different, they generally have to comply.
wvenable 16y ago
In the same vein, if you get an iPhone 4 you can every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that innovative and competitive software will be rejected or removed from the app store. I'd say that's as much of a problem with iOS platform as older OS versions is with Android. If you want the same iPhone upgrade experience with Android, your best option is to get a Nexus One. As a WinMo user, I've long accepted that the OEMs are terrible. My solution to this problem is make sure that whatever phone I buy has a strong hacker community around it so that I can unofficially upgrade whenever I wish. With my current phone, I flashed away from the stock ROM within a week and I upgrade every 6 months or so. In fact, I can even run Android on my phone even though it didn't exist when my phone was originally released.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >In the same vein, if you get an iPhone 4 you can every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that innovative and competitive software will be rejected or removed from the app store. This is just nonsense. Looks like your one of the "anti-apple hoard" the GGP was talking about. It's pretty well known why the 2%-3% of apps get rejected: using a private API, violating the agreement, violating laws (e.g. ignoring codec copyrights). Name one single piece of "innovative and competitive software" that was rejected without a good reason.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Google Voice.
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      "TechCrunch suspects, probably correctly, that apps for Google Voice are being rejected at least in part through AT&T's influence, since Google Voice lets you send free text messages and delivers cut-rate international calls on top of making phone numbers even more meaningless making it scary to AT&T in way like Skype VoIP over 3G." [1] If you're trying to bypass the phone company that is using the phone as a loss leader of course you can expect that app to be rejected. Skype is approved though, afaik. Is that your only example? [1] http://gizmodo.com/5324268/apple-rejects-official-google-voice-iphone-app http://gizmodo.com/5324268/apple-rejects-official-google-voi...
ahk 16y ago
Oh come on. Blaming Android for Verizon/Motorola's failings (and your own in not realizing what everyone was saying was _the_ advantage of the Nexus One) as well as rapid technological progress is pathetic. Do you even remember the stunt Apple pulled a few years ago where they dropped the price of iPhone from $599 to $399? Do you intend to ping pong between Apple and Android whenever they announce such decisions?
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Blaming Android for Verizon/Motorola's failings (and your own in not realizing what everyone was saying was _the_ advantage of the Nexus One) as well as rapid technological progress is pathetic. His point is that, unless he buys a N1 maybe, he will never ever have any guarantees that his phone will be kept up to date for even 2 years.
  - ahk 16y ago
    Have you/the OP heard of Android's extremely lively mod scene? Cyanogen even supports the ancient G1 to very nearly the latest 2.1 version of android.
    - masklinn 16y ago
      Most users are not going to bother with rooting their phones and installing cyanogen. > Cyanogen even supports the ancient G1 to very nearly the latest 2.1 version of android. Disingenuous, Cyanogen specifically supports 4 phones: Dream, Magic, N1 and Droid. Notice the distinct lack of Motorola Devour in the list?
      - ahk 16y ago
        I was responding to the parent's point about "only" "N1 maybe", which is obviously false.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  Ok, so Apple haters blast Apple for keeping such a tight control and cheer when savior Google comes out with something "open", but when that openness is used by the vendors to do what they want instead of what Google wants it's not Google's fault? Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the reason Apple behaves as it does is to avoid exactly this problem? You're pointing at something you think should theoretically be better and pointing fingers when it doesn't pan out, meanwhile the "evil" alternative is giving users a great experience.
buster 16y ago
Does "currently evaluated" mean "we won't update"? Not sure how Motorola handled that. Is it just marketing talk or will they just drop the update? https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/manager/softwareupgrades https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/manager/softwar...

Splines 16y ago

> If I get a iPhone 4, I have every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that subsequent iOS upgrades work on my phone until there's a legitimate technical reason to exclude it,... Kudos to Apple for doing this, by the way. I have an iPhone 3G and really appreciate Apple's efforts in keeping my device up-to-date. Apple's decision to own the phone from end-to-end (sans AT&T) has proven to provide a high-quality experience to customers. It's telling that the only part of the experience that Apple doesn't own is arguably the largest pain point of the iPhone. It's too bad that Android/WinMo answer to the OEMs, and not the other way around. If Compaq or Dell dictated upgrade policies for PCs the world would be a very different place.

aston 16y ago
Here's a fun factoid: your iPhone 3G (and mine) will totally miss out on iOS4's multi-tasking. If Apple is better than Motorola/Verizon in terms of keeping older hardware up-to-date, it's not by much.
- czhiddy 16y ago
  I imagine iOS4 multitasking on a 128mb device would be horrible. The OS has grown with every release; there's probably even less memory for apps to work with in 4.0. I think Apple would rather see complaints of not supporting the 3G rather than scathing reviews of how poorly it performs. No updates for a 3 month old phone is quite a large difference from leaving a hardware-limited feature out of an update to a 2 year old device.
  - megablast 16y ago
    Another interesting point, the new iPhone 4 has 512mb ram, the 3GS and iPad have 256mb. A lot of people think it was strange to put only 256mb in the iPad. Just wondering what sort of stuff the new iPhone 4 will get that the ipad will not. Hopefully it is just more memory for video related stuff, and will not hold back any new upgrades for the ipad.
    - pietrofmaggi 16y ago
      The iPad is an older project, when it started, on single task iPhoneOS 3.2, 256MB of RAM was the "right amount". Now with iOS4, simil-multitasking and a lot of video to edit, 256MB seems just a bit to tight. We have to wait and see if the release of the iOS4 for the iPad will bring come new hardware with it.
      - masklinn 16y ago
        Yeah but though I expect the iPad project was a closely guarded secret within Apple, iOS 4 likely wasn't, and the iPhone 4 was probably less of a secret than the pad. Why the iPad team didn't get any hints as to the amount of RAM to put in the thing is beyond me, especially as there are already reports of RAM-limitation issues on the pad (e.g. where iPhone 3gs Safari can keep half a dozen tabs around without reloading them all the time, iPad is apparently unable to)
nlawalker 16y ago
My 3G became dog slow as a dog when I installed the software that was released alongside the 3GS. It has been ever since, through every following upgrade.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  I noticed my 3G seemed to start getting slower, have more frequent "world has come to a stop" pauses right around when the 3GS came out. I wondered a bit if it was a conspiracy of sorts, something intentional Apple did to make the non-3GS models seem even slower than they were. Not sure, of course, or whether a coincidence. But it's interesting to hear at least one other person noticed this.
  - allend 16y ago
    It's almost surely your imagination, even if other people have had the same experience. By the way, I have the same experience.

SandB0x 16y ago

Double-tangentially related. My contract with Vodafone (UK) is up for renewal soon and there's the HTC Wildfire, Nexus One, Desire, Legend, Tattoo listed on the website. Just to be clear, this is attempting to narrow it down to one carrier, one manufacturer, one operating system. How about a clear flagship model and a budget option rather than all this shitty confusion? Then maybe you'll have the engineering resources to keep the two or three models up to date. This is similar to my laptop rant the other day. It's sad to see companies shooting themselves in the foot.

orangecat 16y ago
Agreed that they're making things way more complicated than they should be. As far as the parent poster, I have no idea why the Devour even exists; it's inferior to the Droid in every way. In your case the Nexus One is clearly the way to go; nothing else is significantly better spec-wise, and being Google's "official" model it's guaranteed to get updates first.
usaar333 16y ago
In your specific case, the only clear "dumb" redundancies are the wildfire and legend (the differences seem trivial). And yes, I agree, it makes little sense for HTC to be making such similar models. The Desire is the flagship (to htc), the tattoo is the low-end budget and the legend/wildfire is mid-range. All of the other models HTC makes seem to be due to deals with carriers/other companies. The Nexus One is a google-branded phone sans sense. The Sprint hero had changes from the regular due to Sprint. The last goes on. I imagine HTC is somewhat forced into this position. They don't have enough market power, so if a carrier wants something different, they generally have to comply.

wvenable 16y ago

In the same vein, if you get an iPhone 4 you can every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that innovative and competitive software will be rejected or removed from the app store. I'd say that's as much of a problem with iOS platform as older OS versions is with Android. If you want the same iPhone upgrade experience with Android, your best option is to get a Nexus One. As a WinMo user, I've long accepted that the OEMs are terrible. My solution to this problem is make sure that whatever phone I buy has a strong hacker community around it so that I can unofficially upgrade whenever I wish. With my current phone, I flashed away from the stock ROM within a week and I upgrade every 6 months or so. In fact, I can even run Android on my phone even though it didn't exist when my phone was originally released.

loewenskind 16y ago
>In the same vein, if you get an iPhone 4 you can every confidence that Apple will make every effort to ensure that innovative and competitive software will be rejected or removed from the app store. This is just nonsense. Looks like your one of the "anti-apple hoard" the GGP was talking about. It's pretty well known why the 2%-3% of apps get rejected: using a private API, violating the agreement, violating laws (e.g. ignoring codec copyrights). Name one single piece of "innovative and competitive software" that was rejected without a good reason.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Google Voice.
  - loewenskind 16y ago
    "TechCrunch suspects, probably correctly, that apps for Google Voice are being rejected at least in part through AT&T's influence, since Google Voice lets you send free text messages and delivers cut-rate international calls on top of making phone numbers even more meaningless making it scary to AT&T in way like Skype VoIP over 3G." [1] If you're trying to bypass the phone company that is using the phone as a loss leader of course you can expect that app to be rejected. Skype is approved though, afaik. Is that your only example? [1] http://gizmodo.com/5324268/apple-rejects-official-google-voice-iphone-app http://gizmodo.com/5324268/apple-rejects-official-google-voi...

ahk 16y ago

Oh come on. Blaming Android for Verizon/Motorola's failings (and your own in not realizing what everyone was saying was _the_ advantage of the Nexus One) as well as rapid technological progress is pathetic. Do you even remember the stunt Apple pulled a few years ago where they dropped the price of iPhone from $599 to $399? Do you intend to ping pong between Apple and Android whenever they announce such decisions?

masklinn 16y ago
> Blaming Android for Verizon/Motorola's failings (and your own in not realizing what everyone was saying was _the_ advantage of the Nexus One) as well as rapid technological progress is pathetic. His point is that, unless he buys a N1 maybe, he will never ever have any guarantees that his phone will be kept up to date for even 2 years.
- ahk 16y ago
  Have you/the OP heard of Android's extremely lively mod scene? Cyanogen even supports the ancient G1 to very nearly the latest 2.1 version of android.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    Most users are not going to bother with rooting their phones and installing cyanogen. > Cyanogen even supports the ancient G1 to very nearly the latest 2.1 version of android. Disingenuous, Cyanogen specifically supports 4 phones: Dream, Magic, N1 and Droid. Notice the distinct lack of Motorola Devour in the list?
    - ahk 16y ago
      I was responding to the parent's point about "only" "N1 maybe", which is obviously false.
loewenskind 16y ago
Ok, so Apple haters blast Apple for keeping such a tight control and cheer when savior Google comes out with something "open", but when that openness is used by the vendors to do what they want instead of what Google wants it's not Google's fault? Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the reason Apple behaves as it does is to avoid exactly this problem? You're pointing at something you think should theoretically be better and pointing fingers when it doesn't pan out, meanwhile the "evil" alternative is giving users a great experience.

buster 16y ago

Does "currently evaluated" mean "we won't update"? Not sure how Motorola handled that. Is it just marketing talk or will they just drop the update? https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/manager/softwareupgrades https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/manager/softwar...