That’s the problem. Why should your carrier have any say so in updating your operating system? If I buy a computer from Best Buy, I don’t have to wait for them to push an update to Windows.
Further, who do you think customer's call for support?
Now you know why carriers are hesitant about frequently updating a product they've already made a sale on. If an update breaks something, guess who pays the price?
Not defending them, and it's not the only reason, but it's a big one.
Whether or not they should have a say is a great question. Now that they do, I'm not sure it can be taken away without them simply choosing the next os that they do have more say over.
> Which is why I prefer to buy my phone independently from the carrier service.
You're clearly a tech literate person, which is great! But I've worked at a phone/computer repair/resell store for 2 years, and let me tell you, the "general public" can be very interesting.
It's common for many people to not know that their "phone runs android". Let alone the which version LOL!
What I'm trying to say is, it's great that you buy your phone that way, and that's the smart way to do it. We've had plenty of customers looking for unlocked phones too, but even then many don't understand how there's different radios in the phones that work with different carriers, some didn't actually know what being "unlocked" means, etc.
Then it's just a liability and risk choice for them. If the user is not able to update, then they shouldn't be the ones on the hook if there are problems.
The phone subsidies (in the US at least) are very reminiscent of the old leased phones of yore.
But if you look at the actions of mobile phone carriers and ISPs they're desperate not to become dumb pipes. They design all kinds of clever mechanisms and marketing strategies to distinguish themselves.
> Is there actually profit in providing more than that?
Well, in a free market, competition is intense. So if they can find ways to distort that, then yes: they will make more money. Many of us don't have much allegiance to particular gas station brands. But they create rewards programs to try and get some of that loyalty. Otherwise you just compete on price.
Google didn't even make any phones until much later. Instead they gave phone manufacturers the green light to do whatever they wanted. They ended up designing phones later because of how crappy the Android phone ecosystem had become. Google could have made Nexuses from the get-go.
This is ten times better than what any provider offers today. If someone implements this, nobody will want to use old scheme anymore.
Also this should promote competition between carriers.
Of all the monopoly-leverage-based requirements Google could make of Android vendors, demanding update SLA and EOL minima are apparently ones they've never contemplated.
0/10, would not recommend, ever.
Would be an interesting chart to show the things the various carriers had turned on / off... added / removed which similar phones.
Which risk keeps you awake at night:
A few Samsung phone users bricking their phones occasionally
A few iPhone users bricking their phones occasionally
50 million Galaxy phones being bricked by Samsung at once
50 million iPhones being bricked by Apple at once
What the carrier actually wants is to force some applications to always be installed in the customer devices, because of shady business deals, a.k.a. 'partnerships'.
You made that choice when you decided you wanted a carrier subsidized phone.