Hacker News Reader

Comment by kungfooey | Hacker News Reader

It's a short-term gain. As a Galaxy S1 owner, I've been burnt by the "nice hardware, no ongoing software support" issue and I probably will not invest any of my hard-earned money in Samsung products in the future. As a tech-influencer of friends and family, when asked for advice about the Samsung phones, I always recommend against them.

I've noted other users express similar concerns, which leads me to believe they've sacrificed long-term consumer loyalty to short-term growth.

View on HN

Google recognizes this problem and is attempting to get vendors onboard with an 18 month commitment for updates(http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/10/google-promises-android-d...) .

On the other hand, the hardware vendors prefer you buy a new handset every year. How many vendors will agree to long term updates is anybody's guess. I'm no fan of Apple but this is where their controlled line of hardware definitely helps updates/support.

You'd be hard pushed to find a smartphone contract (for the likes of the iPhone and SII, anyway) on the high street that isn't 18 or even 24 months, in the UK at least. If Samsung think they can have a 12 month turn-around on their high-end models, they're lying to themselves, and if their business model depends on a 12-month turnaround, they're in trouble.

Expand further on your claim of "no ongoing software support" please.

I was personally burned by the Moment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SPH-M900#Controversy

It got a single major update (from Android 1.5 to 2.1). Which was delayed from three months after the phone came out to seven. And software support stopped immediately after said update.

Compare that to the HTC Evo, which just recently got an update to 2.3, over a year after the phone was released.

EDIT: I should also mention that the phone and its drivers were incredibly buggy, even after the 2.1 update. The GPS was the worst- the only way anyone even got it working long-term was to port over a driver from the Intercept.

Just be glad you didn't pick a Motorola Milestone.

Out of curiosity, why? Wikipedia mentions a constantly-delayed 2.2 update, but from what I've heard, the Droid/Milestone is a very good phone, updates or not.

In the UK I'm extra-unfortunate as no carrier picked it up, so we were all scratching our heads as the update got delayed for months for "carrier testing". The update made an absolutely huge difference, living without it was painful and apart from the huge delay, Motorola's handling of the situation was just terrible, their interactions with customers and the information they were giving out was all just very badly managed.

Eek, that's pretty bad. At least I had both Sprint and Samsung to bitch at.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com