6 ms·

It’s time to start paying for Android updates

43 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

parfe 15y ago
No. The time has come for phone manufacturers to cease locking down phones and preventing one click updates. Imagine a world where you had to buy a new desktop because the vendor provided you with Windows XP service pack 1 but decided the machine would no longer be supported? That situation does not exist, thankfully, because PC vendors never had the nerve to lock owners out of their own property. The cell phone industry still thinks they should control every little interaction on the handset, forcing their bloated UI overlays, restricting features, and nickel and diming customers. I refuse to entertain the notion I should be giving these people more money for the sole purpose of formalizing their control my property. I run ICS on a Samsung Galaxy S. Samsung officially will not support it because their resource intensive "improvement" called TouchWiz can't run on the older handset when ported to ICS. Meanwhile some kid, for free with spare time, managed to build a fully functional ICS version I run without issue. At this point in time, locked bootloaders only exist to keep customers on the hardware upgrade treadmill. It needs to stop.
- twiceaday 15y ago
  Wasn't Google thinking about tightening up it's Android policies to discourage manufacturers from hacking on "improvements"?
  - myko 15y ago
    I don't think so, this would really restrict the manufacturers and make them less likely to use Android. What Google has done is for ICS+ phones they must contain Android's stock themes so applications developed against said theme will look consistent on every device. The manufacturer can still have their own themes, and developers can detect if they exist and use them, but the stock theme must be available.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  The article specifically says that phones should be unlocked. You wrote a nice little rant that everybody agrees with so you got a lot of upvotes, but completely orthogonal to the original article.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    I think the real headline should actually say "It's time to stop submitting articles from Extreme Tech." Their headlines never say the true intent of their article, and their article never comes to the conclusion that has been set up through the arguments. There is extreme bias and non sequiturs riddling the entire site. It's a difficult read because of the logic errors, and everytime an article is posted from Extreme Tech, it seems everyone comes away with a different opinion of what was really meant. This isn't creative literature class. This is not a good way to run a website.
  - parfe 15y ago
    No, I do not advocate just unlocked bootloaders, but freed operating systems. The overhead of these phone manufactures comes from their horrible customizations and differentiation practices. I find the idea of paying $10 for the privilege of updating the OS just so I can get the new version of Sense, or TouchWiz, or MotoBlur, or whatever Sony runs now repugnant. I think this idea pushes the market in the wrong direction. The fact that volunteers create functional ICS installations shows that it doesn't take time or money to get ICS itself running. The vendors themselves add cost by leaving their taint on every interaction I have on the phone. And the article itself says "OEMs that want to engage in paid updates should have a bootloader unlock solution for users that want to update on their own." with no reasoning at all besides it would make the writer feel warm and fuzzy.
    - liquidsnake 15y ago
      The overhead of these phone manufactures comes from their horrible customizations and differentiation practices. I find the idea of paying $10 for the privilege of updating the OS just so I can get the new version of Sense, or TouchWiz, or MotoBlur, or whatever Sony runs now repugnant. Well, they don't have much to differentiate do they? They all get the same Android, the hardware is pretty much the same between classes of phones (the customer doesn't really care it's a Tegra 3 or a S4) and there are not too many ways you can tinker with the hardware design so they have to add their own interface to make it different.
eli 15y ago
That seems like a tall order. You want them to charge for updates, but also make it easier for you to install updates without paying for them?
squarecat 15y ago
Aside from the strong note of Android OEM apologist emanating from this piece, the fact that this idea isn't /entirely/ preposterous speaks volumes about the sad state of the platform. What Google releases and what most buyers eventually experience are as different as day and night. As a long time devotee and early-adopting "evangelist" (especially Maps, Gmail/Apps, Picasa, and eventually Android) it seems we are witnessing Google's decent into terminal failure to grasp the concept, and value, of "customer"...
- bunderbunder 15y ago
  I think that Android OEMs deserve some apology, if anything so that folks can better understand the realities of the situation. People want updates like Apple provides with iPhones, but given how vastly different the business structures are in the Androidverse, that may not be realistic. Apple provides updates to old phones because it has a strong financial incentive to do so: They don't just sell phones, they also operate an app marketplace for those phones, and they get a cut of the sale price of every app sold through that marketplace. So they want to keep all their users buying apps, even the ones with old phones. Part of doing that is giving existing users a reason to stay checked-in - and pushing new features to users of old phones through OS updates allows them to do that. They also want to have as much "awesomeness" in the app store as they can get, and one way they can facilitate that is by minimizing the hurdles that might prevent developers from using all the latest and greatest features in their APIs. On that front, the biggest hurdle imaginable would be if only a minority of the platform's users had the ability to run apps that depend on the latest API. So Apple really, really wants to keep old iPhones up to date as long as they can, not out of some sense of corporate altruism, but because doing this maximizes app store profits for them. On Android, on the other hand, there is absolutely none of that. The only time Android OEMs see any money is when you buy a new phone. They don't care if you can run ICS+-only apps, because they don't see money from the app store. They don't care if you keep buying new apps, because they don't see any money from the app store. They don't even particularly care if you prematurely decide your phone is janky and outdated and you need a new one on account of no OS updates, because. . . oh wait, they do care there. They want that to happen, because the only time they see money is when your current phone gets tossed in the dustbin. Meanwhile, as the article points out, providing updates to old phones is quite an expensive process. Especially if you're doing anything beyond pushing patches. So. . . given that the incentive structure built into the Androidverse serves to heavily disincentivize OEMs from providing iPhone-style support, the question remains: Why on earth, then, should they?
b0o 15y ago
pay for an update? no. ics is already available for many phones through the cyanogenmod team and there are other teams out there that develop their own mods for ics, and I'd rather donate $100 than pay the carriers $10 because I know whatever update cm develops would be 10 times better than that of whatever update the carriers provide. Although it would be nice if the updates were made available, and it should be happening faster than what it is now, but I don't see that happening as long as cm and the rest of the rom developing community keeps doing what they do best.
saturdaysaint 15y ago
This sounds ineffective. To most consumers, a software update is an annoyance whose benefits are often hazy. Look how hard they procrastinate free updates. So expecting money for an update to a device that's often replaced within a year or two is a non-starter. The most effective thing Google can realistically do is ship desirable Motorola phones that get updated to the latest Android version the day of release.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
Ah, b0o seems to be hell-banned, but quite frankly, I agree. I've donated over $300 to various overlay maintainers for CyanogenMod. Why? Because, time and time and time again, they manage to do in 2 months what it takes carriers/manufacturers 8 months (or really, never) to do: update the software on my Android phone to the latest release. I kept both my Droid and Fascinate for a good 6-months or more extra because I was able to load CyanogenMod on it. They both were on higher versions of Android when I decommisioned them than they will ever see official builds for. Give me an unlocked bootloader, follow the terms of the GPL and I'm happy. For regular users, if you want fast updates, buy Nexus or buy Apple. I'm a big Android guy, but honestly, if you want fast updates and the Galaxy Nexus isn't available for your carrier, and you're not willing to install CyanogenMod... just buy an iPhone.
orbitingpluto 15y ago
The following is a wishing metric: "If it charged just $10 for access to the update, that would be $150 million if only half of all users wanted an official update." Few would pay for an update. Especially when the phone is likely to have even more bloatware added each update. Those who would want the update would install a custom rom, especially if it was unlocked by default. The only incentive to upgrade is when someone can't run the next big game. More importantly, that new handset locks the customer into a new contract. That's the priority. Hopefully some egghead executive will realize that offering software updates, replacing batteries, and reducing monthly fees for loyal customers can earn them even more money. Along a similar thought, I have very little desire to pay for Android software because developers have a habit of screwing their customers. I have purchased games with zero permissions to avoid adware in the past, only to have updates add a plethora of unwanted and unneeded security permissions. Paid apps should not be allowed to add security permissions without giving the option for refunds and/or an honest Google code review.
- wmf 15y ago
  A customer with a six-month-old phone is never going to buy a new phone and extend their contract. If OS updates aren't available, they'll just tough it out. Thus offering updates for such phones seems like all upside.
Zak 15y ago
It seems to me that less in the way of UI tweaks and more standardization of drivers would solve the problem. Does anybody really buy a phone for Touchwiz or Motoblur? Could some of these tweaks be delivered as apps that can simply target Android releases instead of specific devices (with some sort of basic DRM to keep the average consumer from installing them on other manufacturer's devices)? It shouldn't be so hard; the PC industry got this mostly right decades ago.
ebbv 15y ago
Having to pay for Android updates would be a good reason to switch to iOS -- where updates are free. The 3GS which was originally released with iOS 3 almost 3 years ago is still able to update to the most current iOS 5.1 for free.
- makhanko 15y ago
  And this is exactly the reason why paid Android upgrades is a terrible idea - Apple has set a gold standard for updating OS and paying for Android updates will make the situation even worse for Android users.
kinleyd 15y ago
I think we should start paying for Android updates, but only by donating to the after-market Android community like CyanogenMod. These are the folks who bring the latest Android goodness to devices long abandoned by their makers.
makhanko 15y ago
May be we are barking at the wrong tree, carriers and device manufacturers that is. Case in point - Google's own Nexus S phone which has not yet received official ICS update! Either google intentionally holding it back hoping to sell more Galaxy Nexus phone with ICS installed or most likely the ICS leapfrogged at the expense of its backwards compatibility with the existing hardware. Google should wake up and smell the roses before it's going to be too late to repair the damage. Next time they announce a major OS update consumers will not even care because by the time they see the update on their phone, the next iOS version will be announced and pushed to iPhones on the same day.
CountSessine 15y ago
Galaxy Nexus owner here. I'm still the only person in my office (a tech company with lots of geeks) who's running ICS. It's really lonely here on Android 4. I don't think that paying for updates is going to help matters - that's just another good argument to get an iPhone. Instead, I think Google has to start giving device manufacturers a cut of the Android app store revenue. Others here have pointed out that handset makers have no incentive to keep their customers using the latest version of Android. If they wanted to make sure that their customers were still buying Android apps, keeping them on an up-to-date version of Android would be more important.
- rogerbinns 15y ago
  There is also a comparison to the GPS industry (Garmin et al). They charge a fee for map updates, charged for traffic and only ever provided new functionality on new devices. Nowadays the market is shrinking - who wants such crippled devices - and the usually sold models include lifetime maps and traffic.
salem 15y ago
If newer versions of Android monetize better for Google, then Google should be paying handset makers a bounty for each of their phones that is upgraded to the latest OS to encourage them to push the update. Otherwise it is likely cannibalizing their revenue from selling new phones (or at least they think it will), and they have little motivation to invest in updates.

43 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

parfe 15y ago

No. The time has come for phone manufacturers to cease locking down phones and preventing one click updates. Imagine a world where you had to buy a new desktop because the vendor provided you with Windows XP service pack 1 but decided the machine would no longer be supported? That situation does not exist, thankfully, because PC vendors never had the nerve to lock owners out of their own property. The cell phone industry still thinks they should control every little interaction on the handset, forcing their bloated UI overlays, restricting features, and nickel and diming customers. I refuse to entertain the notion I should be giving these people more money for the sole purpose of formalizing their control my property. I run ICS on a Samsung Galaxy S. Samsung officially will not support it because their resource intensive "improvement" called TouchWiz can't run on the older handset when ported to ICS. Meanwhile some kid, for free with spare time, managed to build a fully functional ICS version I run without issue. At this point in time, locked bootloaders only exist to keep customers on the hardware upgrade treadmill. It needs to stop.

twiceaday 15y ago
Wasn't Google thinking about tightening up it's Android policies to discourage manufacturers from hacking on "improvements"?
- myko 15y ago
  I don't think so, this would really restrict the manufacturers and make them less likely to use Android. What Google has done is for ICS+ phones they must contain Android's stock themes so applications developed against said theme will look consistent on every device. The manufacturer can still have their own themes, and developers can detect if they exist and use them, but the stock theme must be available.
bryanlarsen 15y ago
The article specifically says that phones should be unlocked. You wrote a nice little rant that everybody agrees with so you got a lot of upvotes, but completely orthogonal to the original article.
- freehunter 15y ago
  I think the real headline should actually say "It's time to stop submitting articles from Extreme Tech." Their headlines never say the true intent of their article, and their article never comes to the conclusion that has been set up through the arguments. There is extreme bias and non sequiturs riddling the entire site. It's a difficult read because of the logic errors, and everytime an article is posted from Extreme Tech, it seems everyone comes away with a different opinion of what was really meant. This isn't creative literature class. This is not a good way to run a website.
- parfe 15y ago
  No, I do not advocate just unlocked bootloaders, but freed operating systems. The overhead of these phone manufactures comes from their horrible customizations and differentiation practices. I find the idea of paying $10 for the privilege of updating the OS just so I can get the new version of Sense, or TouchWiz, or MotoBlur, or whatever Sony runs now repugnant. I think this idea pushes the market in the wrong direction. The fact that volunteers create functional ICS installations shows that it doesn't take time or money to get ICS itself running. The vendors themselves add cost by leaving their taint on every interaction I have on the phone. And the article itself says "OEMs that want to engage in paid updates should have a bootloader unlock solution for users that want to update on their own." with no reasoning at all besides it would make the writer feel warm and fuzzy.
  - liquidsnake 15y ago
    The overhead of these phone manufactures comes from their horrible customizations and differentiation practices. I find the idea of paying $10 for the privilege of updating the OS just so I can get the new version of Sense, or TouchWiz, or MotoBlur, or whatever Sony runs now repugnant. Well, they don't have much to differentiate do they? They all get the same Android, the hardware is pretty much the same between classes of phones (the customer doesn't really care it's a Tegra 3 or a S4) and there are not too many ways you can tinker with the hardware design so they have to add their own interface to make it different.

eli 15y ago

That seems like a tall order. You want them to charge for updates, but also make it easier for you to install updates without paying for them?

squarecat 15y ago

Aside from the strong note of Android OEM apologist emanating from this piece, the fact that this idea isn't /entirely/ preposterous speaks volumes about the sad state of the platform. What Google releases and what most buyers eventually experience are as different as day and night. As a long time devotee and early-adopting "evangelist" (especially Maps, Gmail/Apps, Picasa, and eventually Android) it seems we are witnessing Google's decent into terminal failure to grasp the concept, and value, of "customer"...

bunderbunder 15y ago
I think that Android OEMs deserve some apology, if anything so that folks can better understand the realities of the situation. People want updates like Apple provides with iPhones, but given how vastly different the business structures are in the Androidverse, that may not be realistic. Apple provides updates to old phones because it has a strong financial incentive to do so: They don't just sell phones, they also operate an app marketplace for those phones, and they get a cut of the sale price of every app sold through that marketplace. So they want to keep all their users buying apps, even the ones with old phones. Part of doing that is giving existing users a reason to stay checked-in - and pushing new features to users of old phones through OS updates allows them to do that. They also want to have as much "awesomeness" in the app store as they can get, and one way they can facilitate that is by minimizing the hurdles that might prevent developers from using all the latest and greatest features in their APIs. On that front, the biggest hurdle imaginable would be if only a minority of the platform's users had the ability to run apps that depend on the latest API. So Apple really, really wants to keep old iPhones up to date as long as they can, not out of some sense of corporate altruism, but because doing this maximizes app store profits for them. On Android, on the other hand, there is absolutely none of that. The only time Android OEMs see any money is when you buy a new phone. They don't care if you can run ICS+-only apps, because they don't see money from the app store. They don't care if you keep buying new apps, because they don't see any money from the app store. They don't even particularly care if you prematurely decide your phone is janky and outdated and you need a new one on account of no OS updates, because. . . oh wait, they do care there. They want that to happen, because the only time they see money is when your current phone gets tossed in the dustbin. Meanwhile, as the article points out, providing updates to old phones is quite an expensive process. Especially if you're doing anything beyond pushing patches. So. . . given that the incentive structure built into the Androidverse serves to heavily disincentivize OEMs from providing iPhone-style support, the question remains: Why on earth, then, should they?

b0o 15y ago

pay for an update? no. ics is already available for many phones through the cyanogenmod team and there are other teams out there that develop their own mods for ics, and I'd rather donate $100 than pay the carriers $10 because I know whatever update cm develops would be 10 times better than that of whatever update the carriers provide. Although it would be nice if the updates were made available, and it should be happening faster than what it is now, but I don't see that happening as long as cm and the rest of the rom developing community keeps doing what they do best.

saturdaysaint 15y ago

This sounds ineffective. To most consumers, a software update is an annoyance whose benefits are often hazy. Look how hard they procrastinate free updates. So expecting money for an update to a device that's often replaced within a year or two is a non-starter. The most effective thing Google can realistically do is ship desirable Motorola phones that get updated to the latest Android version the day of release.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Ah, b0o seems to be hell-banned, but quite frankly, I agree. I've donated over $300 to various overlay maintainers for CyanogenMod. Why? Because, time and time and time again, they manage to do in 2 months what it takes carriers/manufacturers 8 months (or really, never) to do: update the software on my Android phone to the latest release. I kept both my Droid and Fascinate for a good 6-months or more extra because I was able to load CyanogenMod on it. They both were on higher versions of Android when I decommisioned them than they will ever see official builds for. Give me an unlocked bootloader, follow the terms of the GPL and I'm happy. For regular users, if you want fast updates, buy Nexus or buy Apple. I'm a big Android guy, but honestly, if you want fast updates and the Galaxy Nexus isn't available for your carrier, and you're not willing to install CyanogenMod... just buy an iPhone.

orbitingpluto 15y ago

The following is a wishing metric: "If it charged just $10 for access to the update, that would be $150 million if only half of all users wanted an official update." Few would pay for an update. Especially when the phone is likely to have even more bloatware added each update. Those who would want the update would install a custom rom, especially if it was unlocked by default. The only incentive to upgrade is when someone can't run the next big game. More importantly, that new handset locks the customer into a new contract. That's the priority. Hopefully some egghead executive will realize that offering software updates, replacing batteries, and reducing monthly fees for loyal customers can earn them even more money. Along a similar thought, I have very little desire to pay for Android software because developers have a habit of screwing their customers. I have purchased games with zero permissions to avoid adware in the past, only to have updates add a plethora of unwanted and unneeded security permissions. Paid apps should not be allowed to add security permissions without giving the option for refunds and/or an honest Google code review.

wmf 15y ago
A customer with a six-month-old phone is never going to buy a new phone and extend their contract. If OS updates aren't available, they'll just tough it out. Thus offering updates for such phones seems like all upside.

Zak 15y ago

It seems to me that less in the way of UI tweaks and more standardization of drivers would solve the problem. Does anybody really buy a phone for Touchwiz or Motoblur? Could some of these tweaks be delivered as apps that can simply target Android releases instead of specific devices (with some sort of basic DRM to keep the average consumer from installing them on other manufacturer's devices)? It shouldn't be so hard; the PC industry got this mostly right decades ago.

ebbv 15y ago

Having to pay for Android updates would be a good reason to switch to iOS -- where updates are free. The 3GS which was originally released with iOS 3 almost 3 years ago is still able to update to the most current iOS 5.1 for free.

makhanko 15y ago
And this is exactly the reason why paid Android upgrades is a terrible idea - Apple has set a gold standard for updating OS and paying for Android updates will make the situation even worse for Android users.

kinleyd 15y ago

I think we should start paying for Android updates, but only by donating to the after-market Android community like CyanogenMod. These are the folks who bring the latest Android goodness to devices long abandoned by their makers.

makhanko 15y ago

May be we are barking at the wrong tree, carriers and device manufacturers that is. Case in point - Google's own Nexus S phone which has not yet received official ICS update! Either google intentionally holding it back hoping to sell more Galaxy Nexus phone with ICS installed or most likely the ICS leapfrogged at the expense of its backwards compatibility with the existing hardware. Google should wake up and smell the roses before it's going to be too late to repair the damage. Next time they announce a major OS update consumers will not even care because by the time they see the update on their phone, the next iOS version will be announced and pushed to iPhones on the same day.

CountSessine 15y ago

Galaxy Nexus owner here. I'm still the only person in my office (a tech company with lots of geeks) who's running ICS. It's really lonely here on Android 4. I don't think that paying for updates is going to help matters - that's just another good argument to get an iPhone. Instead, I think Google has to start giving device manufacturers a cut of the Android app store revenue. Others here have pointed out that handset makers have no incentive to keep their customers using the latest version of Android. If they wanted to make sure that their customers were still buying Android apps, keeping them on an up-to-date version of Android would be more important.

rogerbinns 15y ago
There is also a comparison to the GPS industry (Garmin et al). They charge a fee for map updates, charged for traffic and only ever provided new functionality on new devices. Nowadays the market is shrinking - who wants such crippled devices - and the usually sold models include lifetime maps and traffic.

salem 15y ago

If newer versions of Android monetize better for Google, then Google should be paying handset makers a bounty for each of their phones that is upgraded to the latest OS to encourage them to push the update. Otherwise it is likely cannibalizing their revenue from selling new phones (or at least they think it will), and they have little motivation to invest in updates.