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Comment by rprasad | Hacker News Reader

My phone, purchased brand-new last summer (the model itself is almost, but not quite a year old), still runs Android 2.3. It will run Android 2.3 forever, even though Google owns the company that made it. Jelly Bean, released last year, is still on less than 10% of all Android phones, and may never even exceed 15%.

If Google can't get its act together on the update situation, a lot of people, myself included, will not be buying Android phones the next time our contracts are up.

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What I find disingenuous about this line of argument is that you (and everybody who argues it) know full well that you will not be keeping your current phone "forever", and in fact, it's almost 100% certain you will replace it within 2 years if not 12 months simply because of the 2 year upgrade cycle that exists in many carriers or if not, because of the lure of next generation hardware will convince you to buy a new phone.

So what you are actually asking for is for tremendous engineering resources to be spent to port the bleeding edge OS to your soon to be obsolete phone so that you can use it for a few months and then toss it in the bin.

Now I'm not necessarily arguing that there isn't an issue with upgrade on Android phones etc. But I find this particular tone of "I will be stuck forever with an outdated OS thanks to Google" that appears regularly in these comments to be somewhat disingenuous.

PS: Jelly Bean was not released last year, it was announced literally just hours ago.

Whoops you are right. I meant Ice Cream Sandwich, not Jelly Bean.

But my point stands. Most people buy new phones on a 2 year cycle when their contract expires. I buy phones on a 2-year cycle.

I am not expecting tremendous engineering resources to be spent on porting on bleeding edge OS to an obsolete phone. I am expecting some resources to be spent on porting my phone to an OS that was announced and available to OEMs when my phone was released. I am expecting an OS to be released on a phone which has the hardware to support it.

I am stuck with an outdated OS thanks to Google, becaues they won't do a damn thing to pressure carriers or manufacturers to remedy the update situation.

And you know what? The money I use to buy my phone is my money. When the time comes to vote with my wallet, if Google has not fixed the update situation it created, I will vote for something other than Android.

Google will never fix the situation on devices it doesn't sells itself, because it cannot. They cannot force manufacturers to provide update, because most consumers don't care. If you want a well updated phone, get a Galaxy Nexus. Apart from it, the only other phone in market guaranteed to be updated is iPhone.

Better yet, consider switching to prepaid, and you will be less annoyed every time your carrier withholds the update. Most of the international versions do get updated, even if their record is not as stellar as Google/Apple.

<quote>I am expecting some resources to be spent on porting my phone to an OS that was announced and available to OEMs when my phone was released.</quote>

Why didn't you just buy a phone which already had the latest OS on it at the time if having the latest OS is important to you? Are there no custom ROMS for the phone you have?

1) Available to OEMs does not mean that any OEMs had yet released phones with it on my carrier. I have unlimited data, which effectively shackles me to the carrier unless I want to give that up for a pitiful 2-4 GB/month.

2) I connect to a corporate server. I cannot use a custom ROM for security reasons.

They just finished that acquisition.

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