6 ms·

He said it was a resourcing issue, they didn't have the resources to patch every phone and considered every option. Except, it seems... paying for more resource

by coopdog 14y ago

He said it was a resourcing issue, they didn't have the resources to patch every phone and considered every option. Except, it seems... paying for more resources? I'm just glad to be on a Galaxy Nexus with OTA updates direct from Google. Even then the version I was on was configured not to receive OTA updates as it was a Nexus Samsung ROM not a Nexus Google ROM. It took reflashing the Google image using community tools, something that is mostly not possible for most of the population. I suppose the only solution is greater awareness of the issue, to increase demand for better support

StavrosK 14y ago
I don't understand the problem. Why can we upgrade our computers' OSes so easily, while it's impossible to do it for phones? Don't they have drivers for all their parts so you can just plug them in the OS's API and have the newer versions just work? Why does it take so much work?
- buster 14y ago
  Apparently the driver situation is much different on phones. All the different SoCs need extra drivers, the graphic chips, the display, everything. It's very different on a PC (where you may have upgrade problems as well, if you have hardware that has no drivers for your new OS) and it's especially easy for a Mac.
  - zurn 14y ago
    And that part of Android is largely closed source, so phone vendors are on the mercy of chipset makers, who might not have updating drivers for previous generation hardware as their most important mission.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Plus, I think Google made a terrible mistake in the beginning by not asking manufacturers to support the drivers for their phones for 2 years or more. It would've been even better if they convinced them to make all drivers open source, although that might've been a lot harder to do.
- eternalban 14y ago
  It is a solved problem, as you point out. So it's just business. Symmetry does break when we consider that you don't purchase your PC after consulting and getting permission from your internet provider. Imagine that .. Now the funny thing - insert haha here -- is that the trend seems to be for getting herded onto small, mobile, and ultimately task focused devices and ubiquitous computing. This topic really has significant social bearing far outside its current utilitarian scope. Now lets meet the happy tuple: (Utilitarian, Totalitarian)
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > Don't they have drivers for all their parts There are some differences here: PC components are usually long lived and we expect them to last a couple major system upgrades. This expectation is relatively new with embedded electronics, where the norm has been not to update software at all (think about updating your washing machine firmware). Therefore, the idea of revising a device driver for a component that's already shipping is somewhat alien for a hardware maker - all their resources are devoted to the next generation and few, if any, software improvements trickle back to the previous-gen components. Another factor is driver quality. A lot of the device driver code I saw is full with embarrassing hacks needed to cope with hardware problems and looks a lot like development ended as soon as it worked, without much regard to future maintanability, or even commenting the hacks. Looks a lot like design engineers preferring green wires to correct PCB mistakes while repair engineers favoring the use of yellow ones.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    Yet Apple manages that part of the deal reasonably well. I'd say what's missing is an industry device standard a la IBM PC, such that drivers can be decoupled from the overall device development. It seems like low to midrange smartphones have experienced a race to the bottom before they were even in the position to lower the spending on software integration. I just hope that consumers are aware of this and choose devices that are based on standards set by the OS developer, such as Nexus and Windows Phone. Google has some homework to do in terms of the Nexus brand awareness if you ask me.
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      > what's missing is an industry device standard a la IBM PC I fear that. Before the IBM PC clones the personal computer market was fragmented, but evolution was very fast. In the mid-80's, we had computers and capabilities x86 PCs would only gain in the mid-90's (for instance, plug-and-play expansion slots were present in the Apple II). Amigas had preemptive multitasking and Ataris pushed the price of 32 bit computing to impressive lows. Acorn introduced a RISC-based PC whose processor now powers just about everything that needs to process information around you. Today, most personal computers are descendants of the IBM PC and employ an extended version of its horrid instruction set (the x86 was Intel's plan-B at the time - i432 was plan-A) running a matrioska of computers with something similar to an IBM 5150 at the core. The three major OSs in use on PCs are derived from 60's technologies, two from Unix, one from VMS. We deserve more.
- nmridul 14y ago
  Its more of a business decision me thinks. A lot will not buy the latest phone Model if they could update the software on their 2 year old phone that would give them all the features So, Samsung will be able to sell fewer Galaxy 3 if a user could update the Galaxy 2. (Even if the new OS version is slow on an older hardware).
mtgx 14y ago
Another solution for lack of resources would be reducing complexity. They need to release fewer models a year and promote only those throughout the year. Of course they need a lot more resources for upgrades if they release a different model every month. Rumors say that starting with Android 4.2, and especially with Android 5.0, Google will start upgrading all "Nexus certified" devices (and everyone can make such a device, if they want, under strict rules). I really hope that's true, and I hope the market starts moving towards those devices rather than regular Android ones so it incentivizes manufacturers to build them. I also hope Google intends to upgrade them for 2 years since the phone's launch. http://androidandme.com/2012/10/news/rumor-android-4-2-to-feature-project-roadrunner-new-play-store-customization-center-enhanced-google-now/ http://androidandme.com/2012/10/news/rumor-android-4-2-to-fe... Reducing complexity could also be done if Google released only one major upgrade per year, instead of two. That way it's much less work for manufacturers, too, and most users don't have to be 2 versions behind all the time (like most are on Gingerbread right now). Hopefully Google intends to only release Android 5.0 next year, and that's it. It should also make it easier for developers, who don't have to worry about 5 different API versions at once.
- msh 14y ago
  Or maybe different phones with same internals (see SonyE's Xperia 2011 line which all got ICS updates).
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > They need to release fewer models a year Remember you (or me) are not their clients. The telcos we buy phones from are and they want more models they can push. Also, there are certification issues on different markets. For instance, it's illegal to use an iPhone 5 in Brazil because it wasn't approved by the regulatory agency. One way Motorola can get around this would be to make the phones more modular, with models differing in peripheral components (keypads, LCDs, cameras), keeping the computing engine consistent and manage building images with component-specific flags. One way Google could step in to help would be to make less updates to Android core and release more frequent updates of their userland apps (GMail, Maps, Plus etc). I get JB has better rendering performance on current hardware, but I can live without a performance enhancement for a phone I already have if, in return, I get something like Google Now. And finally, telcos can somehow mitigate the problem by making the phone purchase experience better. If the experience of upgrading a phone were enjoyable, people would do it more often, keep themselves locked in their contracts and just be happy about it.
justin66 14y ago
> He said it was a resourcing issue, they didn't have the resources to patch every phone and considered every option. Except, it seems... paying for more resources? Yeah, and this is the part that's so strange. Attach a dollar figure to how much it would have cost to broaden the list of updated phones. Then consider that Google/Motorola is basically drowning in money and that the dollar figure is just a rounding error. Google buying Motorola was always kind of mysterious. Now it's more mysterious. Google, why would you do something like that if you weren't going to, at a minimum, make sure that they support your stuff as well as possible?
- antidoh 14y ago
  They bought Motorola for their patents. Patents are strategic, employees and devices are tactical.

by coopdog 14y ago

StavrosK 14y ago

I don't understand the problem. Why can we upgrade our computers' OSes so easily, while it's impossible to do it for phones? Don't they have drivers for all their parts so you can just plug them in the OS's API and have the newer versions just work? Why does it take so much work?

buster 14y ago
Apparently the driver situation is much different on phones. All the different SoCs need extra drivers, the graphic chips, the display, everything. It's very different on a PC (where you may have upgrade problems as well, if you have hardware that has no drivers for your new OS) and it's especially easy for a Mac.
- zurn 14y ago
  And that part of Android is largely closed source, so phone vendors are on the mercy of chipset makers, who might not have updating drivers for previous generation hardware as their most important mission.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Plus, I think Google made a terrible mistake in the beginning by not asking manufacturers to support the drivers for their phones for 2 years or more. It would've been even better if they convinced them to make all drivers open source, although that might've been a lot harder to do.
eternalban 14y ago
It is a solved problem, as you point out. So it's just business. Symmetry does break when we consider that you don't purchase your PC after consulting and getting permission from your internet provider. Imagine that .. Now the funny thing - insert haha here -- is that the trend seems to be for getting herded onto small, mobile, and ultimately task focused devices and ubiquitous computing. This topic really has significant social bearing far outside its current utilitarian scope. Now lets meet the happy tuple: (Utilitarian, Totalitarian)
rbanffy 14y ago
> Don't they have drivers for all their parts There are some differences here: PC components are usually long lived and we expect them to last a couple major system upgrades. This expectation is relatively new with embedded electronics, where the norm has been not to update software at all (think about updating your washing machine firmware). Therefore, the idea of revising a device driver for a component that's already shipping is somewhat alien for a hardware maker - all their resources are devoted to the next generation and few, if any, software improvements trickle back to the previous-gen components. Another factor is driver quality. A lot of the device driver code I saw is full with embarrassing hacks needed to cope with hardware problems and looks a lot like development ended as soon as it worked, without much regard to future maintanability, or even commenting the hacks. Looks a lot like design engineers preferring green wires to correct PCB mistakes while repair engineers favoring the use of yellow ones.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  Yet Apple manages that part of the deal reasonably well. I'd say what's missing is an industry device standard a la IBM PC, such that drivers can be decoupled from the overall device development. It seems like low to midrange smartphones have experienced a race to the bottom before they were even in the position to lower the spending on software integration. I just hope that consumers are aware of this and choose devices that are based on standards set by the OS developer, such as Nexus and Windows Phone. Google has some homework to do in terms of the Nexus brand awareness if you ask me.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    > what's missing is an industry device standard a la IBM PC I fear that. Before the IBM PC clones the personal computer market was fragmented, but evolution was very fast. In the mid-80's, we had computers and capabilities x86 PCs would only gain in the mid-90's (for instance, plug-and-play expansion slots were present in the Apple II). Amigas had preemptive multitasking and Ataris pushed the price of 32 bit computing to impressive lows. Acorn introduced a RISC-based PC whose processor now powers just about everything that needs to process information around you. Today, most personal computers are descendants of the IBM PC and employ an extended version of its horrid instruction set (the x86 was Intel's plan-B at the time - i432 was plan-A) running a matrioska of computers with something similar to an IBM 5150 at the core. The three major OSs in use on PCs are derived from 60's technologies, two from Unix, one from VMS. We deserve more.
nmridul 14y ago
Its more of a business decision me thinks. A lot will not buy the latest phone Model if they could update the software on their 2 year old phone that would give them all the features So, Samsung will be able to sell fewer Galaxy 3 if a user could update the Galaxy 2. (Even if the new OS version is slow on an older hardware).

mtgx 14y ago

Another solution for lack of resources would be reducing complexity. They need to release fewer models a year and promote only those throughout the year. Of course they need a lot more resources for upgrades if they release a different model every month. Rumors say that starting with Android 4.2, and especially with Android 5.0, Google will start upgrading all "Nexus certified" devices (and everyone can make such a device, if they want, under strict rules). I really hope that's true, and I hope the market starts moving towards those devices rather than regular Android ones so it incentivizes manufacturers to build them. I also hope Google intends to upgrade them for 2 years since the phone's launch. http://androidandme.com/2012/10/news/rumor-android-4-2-to-feature-project-roadrunner-new-play-store-customization-center-enhanced-google-now/ http://androidandme.com/2012/10/news/rumor-android-4-2-to-fe... Reducing complexity could also be done if Google released only one major upgrade per year, instead of two. That way it's much less work for manufacturers, too, and most users don't have to be 2 versions behind all the time (like most are on Gingerbread right now). Hopefully Google intends to only release Android 5.0 next year, and that's it. It should also make it easier for developers, who don't have to worry about 5 different API versions at once.

msh 14y ago
Or maybe different phones with same internals (see SonyE's Xperia 2011 line which all got ICS updates).
rbanffy 14y ago
> They need to release fewer models a year Remember you (or me) are not their clients. The telcos we buy phones from are and they want more models they can push. Also, there are certification issues on different markets. For instance, it's illegal to use an iPhone 5 in Brazil because it wasn't approved by the regulatory agency. One way Motorola can get around this would be to make the phones more modular, with models differing in peripheral components (keypads, LCDs, cameras), keeping the computing engine consistent and manage building images with component-specific flags. One way Google could step in to help would be to make less updates to Android core and release more frequent updates of their userland apps (GMail, Maps, Plus etc). I get JB has better rendering performance on current hardware, but I can live without a performance enhancement for a phone I already have if, in return, I get something like Google Now. And finally, telcos can somehow mitigate the problem by making the phone purchase experience better. If the experience of upgrading a phone were enjoyable, people would do it more often, keep themselves locked in their contracts and just be happy about it.

justin66 14y ago

> He said it was a resourcing issue, they didn't have the resources to patch every phone and considered every option. Except, it seems... paying for more resources? Yeah, and this is the part that's so strange. Attach a dollar figure to how much it would have cost to broaden the list of updated phones. Then consider that Google/Motorola is basically drowning in money and that the dollar figure is just a rounding error. Google buying Motorola was always kind of mysterious. Now it's more mysterious. Google, why would you do something like that if you weren't going to, at a minimum, make sure that they support your stuff as well as possible?

antidoh 14y ago
They bought Motorola for their patents. Patents are strategic, employees and devices are tactical.