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As much as I love my Galaxy Note II (and boy do I love it), I miss day one updates. I miss even knowing IF I'd get an update, and if the answer is yes, then whe

by criley 14y ago

As much as I love my Galaxy Note II (and boy do I love it), I miss day one updates. I miss even knowing IF I'd get an update, and if the answer is yes, then when I'd get that update. I hate knowing that I own one of the highest end and best selling devices and I literally have zero date or knowledge of whether or not I'm getting 4.2. Even the hacker community hasn't released decent 4.2 roms for me (that support my hardware like s-pen, etc). Apple does updates right.

mikevm 14y ago
That's why I bought a Nexus 4.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  My two year on the Nexus S on sprint is coming to an end soon. So you recommend just buying the 4 directly and that will resolve the updating issues (Sprint was always behind the other major carriers due to 4G or something similar. I'd wait 2 - 3 months post major announcement)
  - 3825 14y ago
    You'll have to switch to a GSM carrier like ATT or T-Mobile though.
- ocean12 14y ago
  Yes, but I buy phones every two years and I'd rather know I'm getting the top technology available at the time when I make my purchase. The N4 is lacking LTE. Maybe not a dealbreaker for some, but it is for me.
- criley 14y ago
  Eh the Nexus 4 is a good chunk smaller than the Note, doesn't have a Wacom based pen digitizer built in and doesn't support LTE. I guess I'm paying for the features I wanted with a currency made of "waiting for updates".
pook1e 14y ago
I'd argue that Google does updates right as well. Both my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 were updated a few weeks ago within a few days of the update being released. It's Samsung, HTC, etc. who are doing updates wrong (though carriers may have some part in that). Edit: I should say Google is getting better with updates. I'm still a bit disappointed with how they handled the Nexus S update to 4.0.
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
Because when an update comes out, you get an update. Whereas with an Android phone, if you want the update, you buy a new phone. That's not by accident.
melling 14y ago
With the one exception of the iPad 1 getting left behind a little early. I guess it couldn't handle the memory requirements. This will force developers to support iOS5 another year, or so. Personally, I'd like to move to the new layout stuff in iOS6.
- mikeash 14y ago
  The iPad 1 was effectively the most memory-constrained device that was supported by iOS 5. It had the same amount of RAM as the iPhone 3GS, but about 5x as many pixels to drive. It really needed to ship with 512MB. Not too surprising that iOS 6 left it behind, but as you note, annoying.
puma 14y ago
I disagree. They had a bug where push email was broken. They didn't even recognize it for months. That's unacceptable. Push email in corporate is huge, but again they really don't care for their enterprise customers and it shows. This update was very late as well.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
______ 14y ago
I don't agree that apple does updates right. for example, downloading the entire OS binary each time is incredibly wasteful of bandwidth and my time
- masklinn 14y ago
  It is true that not getting updates at all is significantly less wasteful of time and resources.
- micampe 14y ago
  iOS does delta OTA updates since 5.0, released in October 2011. 6.1.2 was 12.8MB: http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/02/ios612-100025998-large.jpg http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/02/ios612-100...
- glasshead969 14y ago
  iOS 5 implemented delta updates along with ota updates. iTunes updates are the ones which download full binary.
christopheraden 14y ago
It's also much easier to release updates when all devices that run your OS are consistent, or at least largely homogeneous. Android smartphones have so much variety, both in terms of features and technical specifications, that it must be difficult to have updates released so quickly after Google pushes out a new version of the AOSP. AndroidCentral had a good article about this several months ago (link: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-you-ll-never-have-latest-version-android http://www.androidcentral.com/why-you-ll-never-have-latest-v...) I know one will argue it's not a viable solution for the 99% of Android phone owners out there, but the modding community for Android is very quick to update most flagship phones on most carriers, and even develops on phones that carriers have stopped pushing updates for. My Galaxy S1 had Ice Cream Sandwich on it when I finally traded up to a Nexus 4. It's not as convenient as Apple releasing the official update and rooting+customrecovery+clockworkmod+customrom is a process complicated enough to bar many people from entry, but for those capable folks, we can get updates almost as quickly as those on the Google flagship phone-of-the-day.

by criley 14y ago

mikevm 14y ago

That's why I bought a Nexus 4.

jusben1369 14y ago
My two year on the Nexus S on sprint is coming to an end soon. So you recommend just buying the 4 directly and that will resolve the updating issues (Sprint was always behind the other major carriers due to 4G or something similar. I'd wait 2 - 3 months post major announcement)
- 3825 14y ago
  You'll have to switch to a GSM carrier like ATT or T-Mobile though.
ocean12 14y ago
Yes, but I buy phones every two years and I'd rather know I'm getting the top technology available at the time when I make my purchase. The N4 is lacking LTE. Maybe not a dealbreaker for some, but it is for me.
criley 14y ago
Eh the Nexus 4 is a good chunk smaller than the Note, doesn't have a Wacom based pen digitizer built in and doesn't support LTE. I guess I'm paying for the features I wanted with a currency made of "waiting for updates".

pook1e 14y ago

I'd argue that Google does updates right as well. Both my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 were updated a few weeks ago within a few days of the update being released. It's Samsung, HTC, etc. who are doing updates wrong (though carriers may have some part in that). Edit: I should say Google is getting better with updates. I'm still a bit disappointed with how they handled the Nexus S update to 4.0.

LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago

Because when an update comes out, you get an update. Whereas with an Android phone, if you want the update, you buy a new phone. That's not by accident.

melling 14y ago

With the one exception of the iPad 1 getting left behind a little early. I guess it couldn't handle the memory requirements. This will force developers to support iOS5 another year, or so. Personally, I'd like to move to the new layout stuff in iOS6.

mikeash 14y ago
The iPad 1 was effectively the most memory-constrained device that was supported by iOS 5. It had the same amount of RAM as the iPhone 3GS, but about 5x as many pixels to drive. It really needed to ship with 512MB. Not too surprising that iOS 6 left it behind, but as you note, annoying.

puma 14y ago

I disagree. They had a bug where push email was broken. They didn't even recognize it for months. That's unacceptable. Push email in corporate is huge, but again they really don't care for their enterprise customers and it shows. This update was very late as well.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

______ 14y ago

I don't agree that apple does updates right. for example, downloading the entire OS binary each time is incredibly wasteful of bandwidth and my time

masklinn 14y ago
It is true that not getting updates at all is significantly less wasteful of time and resources.
micampe 14y ago
iOS does delta OTA updates since 5.0, released in October 2011. 6.1.2 was 12.8MB: http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/02/ios612-100025998-large.jpg http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/02/ios612-100...
glasshead969 14y ago
iOS 5 implemented delta updates along with ota updates. iTunes updates are the ones which download full binary.

christopheraden 14y ago

It's also much easier to release updates when all devices that run your OS are consistent, or at least largely homogeneous. Android smartphones have so much variety, both in terms of features and technical specifications, that it must be difficult to have updates released so quickly after Google pushes out a new version of the AOSP. AndroidCentral had a good article about this several months ago (link: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-you-ll-never-have-latest-version-android http://www.androidcentral.com/why-you-ll-never-have-latest-v...) I know one will argue it's not a viable solution for the 99% of Android phone owners out there, but the modding community for Android is very quick to update most flagship phones on most carriers, and even develops on phones that carriers have stopped pushing updates for. My Galaxy S1 had Ice Cream Sandwich on it when I finally traded up to a Nexus 4. It's not as convenient as Apple releasing the official update and rooting+customrecovery+clockworkmod+customrom is a process complicated enough to bar many people from entry, but for those capable folks, we can get updates almost as quickly as those on the Google flagship phone-of-the-day.