“Samsung has revealed that its Galaxy S smartphone and Galaxy Tab 7-inch tablet will not be getting the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update,” Rue Liu reports for SlashGear.
“The company explained that the devices could not be updated due to hardware limitations that would not be able to run the new Android platform alongside Samsung’s custom TouchWiz user interface,” Liu reports.
Read more in the full article here.
Vlad Savov reports for The Verge, “This will come as a massive blow to the great many users of the Galaxy S, who would have rightly expected the 1GHz Hummingbird processor and accompanying memory to be able to handle ICS — it’s the same hardware as you’ll find inside the Nexus S, and that phone is receiving Android 4.0 over the air right now.”
“HTC had this exact same issue when upgrading the Desire to Gingerbread a few months back, and after some equivocation, it was forced to disable some functions of its own Android skin, Sense, in order to make the upgrade fit,” Savov reports. “So Samsung isn’t alone in making its users suffer for buying a skinned Android device.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Aww, Samsung’s pretend iPhone and pretend iPad won’t be getting the Google’s latest pretend iOS. Boo-hoo. To those affected: Now’s a perfect time to go get that iPhone and iPad you really wanted in the first place.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “macgadget” and “Jax44” for the heads up.]
Users of Android devices are typically critical of iPhones and iPads while extolling the virtues of their Samsung and HTC phones and tablets. But not this time.
Read the scores of unfavorable comments following the full article to see just how much unhappiness this development has triggered among Android fans. Some even point out that new versions of iOS are backward compatible — developed for the iPhone 4S, iOS 5 also runs on the three-year old 3GS model. Why, they wonder, can’t new versions of Android do the same …
Apparently samsung’s software layer – which i think is a lie. Almost every newer android has 8 gigs of on device flash. I think samdung just wants to push their victims, i mean customers to a new purchase.
IPhone is a smartphone, but any Android phone should be called an Idiot phone, because only an idiot would buy a phone that is literally worthless by the end of the contract, when they could have bought a subsidized iPhone for the same price as the Android Idiot phone, and had a highly upgradable phone worth more at the end of your contract, than the subsidized price that was originally paid. Wake Up Android Fan Boys!
Why are they unhappy? If they were paying attention they’d have known that early obsolescence is part and parcel of the Android experience.
I guess Samsung users might want to get in line for a smart phone with an “up to date OS”!
Shamdung, sticking it to their users one product at a time!
On sites like Slashdot, fandroids are boasting about how easily they can replace the Samsung software by rooting their phones, while more level-headed commenters are pointing out that the average consumer won’t even know that such actions are possible.
As one poster said while lamenting the fragmentation of Android, there’s one simple statement that tells us all we need to know about the cell phone market:
“The iPhone 3GS just got iOS 5.”
Another demonstration of Fragmandroid. Apple iOS products have more useful years of life through software updates. Macs are the same way. Apple products generally improve with age, My 2007 iMac is still going strong and does not seem dated at all. It will provide at least two or three more years of great service – perhaps even more. That is value in my book.
Know what you mean. My 2005 PowerBook G4 is still going strong. It’s underpowered for viewing videos (which have gotten bigger over the years, needing more CPU power), but it is still great for e-mail, general web browsing, and writing. I have a 2010 mini system with bigger screen to do that which needs more CPU power, but I don’t see myself replacing the PB with another laptop soon.
It is not the size, it is the encoding – new videos are usually encoded using H264 which takes more processing power to decode than a G4 can provide.
Late 2006 Macbook. The rare time I have to watch a video in Flash it’ll spike both CPU cores and send the internal temperature to 80°C+. If it stays above 80C it can freeze the entire machine.
Can’t wait for Flash video to die.
By size, I meant height & width. More pixels require more processing. Long, small screen videos are no problem.
Had a Quadra 660 AV back in the day. Yeah, it did Quicktime videos – about the size of a large postage stamp.
Agree with the wish that Flash dies soon.
There’s a 2004 G5 Tower sitting in the corner at home. It’s become a wireless file/media server. Better with age? Yep, it now has 1+ TB of HD space, a new super DVD optical drive, El Gato EyeTV for the DVR function, and 4 GB RAM. I’ll probably add more RAM soon. I might add a new HD controller and USB buss on PCI cards to take advantage of the more modern internal and external HDs too. It took exactly 3 minutes to add the new DVD reader/burner, no drivers, no configuration, just plug it in.
Samsung and Androidnusers sure are willing to put up with a lot of sh$&t… If Apple did these things I would drop them immediately … But… I guess that’s why Apple buyers are so loyal. Android is like a bad relationship you keep trying to make it work, tell your friends and family everything is fine…. But eventually you just say f&$k it, leave and find a partner who treats you right….. There’s someone out there for everyone….Siri !!!!!
A lot of iPhone 3G users, including my brother, got screwed by Apple with the iOS4 update. About the only thing they got was app folders, but the update made the 3G dog slow with laggy responsiveness. The latest 4.x update never fully fixed that, and Apple didn’t allow people to revert to 3.x.
A few 3G friends moved to Android. My brother was considering the same, haven’t asked what he finally decided to do.
Your point is totally overblown. My wife’s 3Gs is still plenty fast. Many of the issues were solved long ago. And if your brother and friends move to android after reading this article, well, there’s an idiot born every minute of every day…
A related article explained that this was typical of Samsung’s way of thinking, only caring about getting customers to buy the products, but “washing their hands” of the product once the customer owns it.
So, to Samsung, the device’s OS is like “firmware.” If it’s not broken in some major way, there is no need to release a software update or upgrade. Doing so, as a service to customers to keep them happy, is just an unnecessary expense.
Every month there is a new Samsung replacement of their products. It is not in the interest of Samsung to enable their customers to prolong the life of their products. Samsung wants its customers to ditch the old products for new ones every month.
That’s how it is able to undercut its competitors’ pricing and also to copy any new features of its competitors’ offering. This is the tactic of a Korean chaebol whose business ethics are opaque, with many uncontrolled cross-subsidies and incestuous relationship with politicians. It’s no wonder why Western businesses are no match under such uneven playing field – the natural killing field for a chaebol such as Samsung.
How many versions of a Samsung Galaxy something or other are there… it’s already pretty confusing as to which one runs which version of that robot OS. Talk about confusing the actual consumers… “is it the old Galaxy, the original Galaxy, the newest Galaxy, the tablet Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, the distant Galaxy with a side of ice cream sandwich with hot fudge intergalactic sauce…??”
I have no idea but it IS CONFUSING.
Never owned a samsung phone or tablet and this seals the deal on me avoiding them in the future!
No need for confusion. It’s actually pretty consistent. When you buy a Samsung product, what you get when you pay for it IS what you get, forever. Don’t expect anything more…
I wouldn’t expect an upgrade to a Samsung microwave oven. I shouldn’t expect an upgrade to a Samsung smartphone or tablet. That would be against their corporate “philosophy.”
When it was announced in late October that HTC’s Nexus One phone wouldn’t run Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0, Michael DeGusta found that it is actually quite common for older (legacy) phones to be incompatible with the latest Android system software.
He referred to these as “Android Orphans.”
The chart accompanying his article shows the huge contrast between Android’s history and Apple’s in this regard:
http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support
This isn’t about Apple fans using the lack of upgradability to attack Android. It comes down to real issues that consumers care about: the ability to purchase an app and know that it is compatible with your phone, the ability to fix security problems (hacks and viruses) with an update available to all, the ability to transfer apps from an older phone to a newly purchased one, etc. These are big deals to the typical consumer!
I believe DeGusta’s findings plus other comparative research (iOS vs. Android) would have a big impact on the typical consumer, who want their phones to just work, with no hassles. Apple should develop a series of commercials to highlight these differences so consumers are better informed before purchasing their next phone. The current setting, where consumers depend on word-of-mouth and cheap prices in selecting phones, offers Android a huge advantage in the marketplace.
It’s not enough for Apple to produce a higher quality product; consumers need to be made aware of what quality refers to in a mobile device and how it matters to their everyday experience as users.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Why fragmentation matters:
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-fragmentation-why-it-really-matters-you-and-i
Kindle Fire lacks parental controls, off switch for online purchases:
High repair costs of Android phones:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/android-operators-cost-idUSL5E7M243B20111103
So Samsung milked their customers, siphoned off the cream, and left a curdled mess that can be fixed by upgrading to the newest serving of kooky-dough?
I think I’ll stay with Apple’s ‘Deluxe Cream O’ the Crop’.
They may have fewer flavors, but the slow churn results in half the fat….
http://edys.slowchurned.com/flavor.aspx?b=117&f=1671
I agree.
Also, I wonder — can iSO-5 install on the iPhone original,
3 or 3g? And if so, does it not lack functions. Example SIRI was not intended to work yet on the iPhone4. Nor does it work on my IPAD.
Yes, as to the article… ANDROID is its own worst problem.
And it is safe to understand that – the Android clowns like Samsung – are consistent to their market. As all manufactures before smartphones are – the do not Think Differently.
Samsung and others — believe — Inferior, disposable, non-upgradeable devices have a life span of about 1 to 2 years… and HOPE people to buy a new product once they REALIZE they need it.
iOS 5 can’t run on original iPhone or 3G. It runs fine on the 3GS.
Siri does not officially run on the iPhone 4. There’s always a few features available on the latest hardware that’s not available on the older. Location-based reminders did not work on my 3GS, for example, before I upgraded to the 4S.
But, but, it’s open!!!
FRAGMENTATION! As Android progresses so does the saddening of there supported hardware. What made Windows predominant were to facts. Cost and compatibility, Android offers nether.
I’m was wondering if you meant ‘neither’, even though ‘nether’ was funnier and made more sense!
I just read your words and would like to point out, when others fall or make mistakes, slip-up or make a typo — should we laugh?
“I’m was wondering…” I believe you mean, ‘I WAS WONDERING’; yet I am suspecting you deliberately wrote it that way to let us all laugh – THANKS for that. Lol.
It happens to us all – and sometimes the autocorrection is the culprit – but most times we just are in such a rush we fail to RE-READ our own words.
I don’t really care about correcting anyone’s spelling since I mess up enough on that count, but since it was brought up, the thing that caught my eye was the “to” instead of “two.” Since the intent was clear, maybe it could just pass for the updated “2.” 😉
This is why you don’t go out and buy imitation junk, because you get what you pay for, JUNK!!!!
Google gave their ever loyal fragtards a shit sandwich.
Seriously, TouchWiz? I think that pretty much sums it up.
Kinda like CheeseWix
Wonder where the new Ice Cream Sandwich update is coming from?
Watch the video and u shall know
http://www.screenwerk.com/2010/09/02/evil-google-ice-cream-man/
SOME of the BASIC features of a smartphone that
make it great to have are:
– virtual keyboard that are responsive
– simplified contacts – just press to dial
– easy interface and less buttons
– a few simple tools – like calculator and notes
APPLE could make a superior low entry – high quality.
A SIMPLE-PHONE – a great phone with the basics.
– music and video and extra apps could be disabled
– possibly no camera also
As some buyers in the market do not need a pocket computer.
————
Dare I say, I do like the idea of a MICRO SD slot.
And was so happy Apple added the SD slot to the iMACs.
I do not think one would be needed on a SIMPLE-PHONE.
In addition:
I see APPLE one day TRULY producing this SIMPLE-PHONE.
AND there are no virtual buttons only a nice display not too big – a speaker and microphone and a power button.
ITS ENTIRELY — SIRI controlled.
NO APPS… just SIRI the SIMPLER-PHONE.
tell SIRI to:
call, text, add contact, take notes, asked to calculate,
save files to iCloud, play song from iCloud, etc.
I AM MOST CERTAIN THIS WILL HAPPEN.
and its the LOWER LEVEL – QUALITY PHONE for all.
a Market APPLE needs to met.
It’s called the 3GS and it’s free with a contract.
Heres what an apologist replied to John Gruber via Twitter.
” from “Relative Sanity” on Twitter: “It’s a development platform, not a computing platform. That’s why tech commentators can’t see the difference.””
Some will gladly submit to being shafted it seems.
Sweet lord, that twit doesn’t make sense. How is that guy not a character in a Dilbert strip?
Go to the original article and read the comments. All those Android folks discussing whether OS updates are needed, and is so, what hacks will get the job done. A few voices point out that most people won’t put up with that. What a mess Android is!
i’m more surprised that the galaxy s has sold 10 million units
thats a fuck ton of sales
A real tangent but does anyone else think calling a software release Ice Cream Sandwich is stupid? It’s like it’s supposed to sound clever but it just seems amateur.
It was just the internal project name.
Officially its just Android 4.0.
Althought a lot of press and users call the OS by the internal names. Google has nothing on ubuntu though… great names like gutsy gibbon are a rare happening 😉
Coal in yo stockings, beeyoches!
A development platform is consumed by developers to build product. A computing platform is consumed by end users to get stuff done. The actual customers for android are the phone manufacturers & carriers, not people (except people who want to tinker/develop for themselves). Android replaced Symbian. iOS created a new market.
Here’s the comment about this I posted at theverge.com, thought it might be of interest here…
“If you are a techy user, then you can root your phone. If you are not a techy user, then you are too stupid to care and you don’t matter.”
You know, the big idea in tech blog comments sections is often that Apple users are snotty elitists.
But I’ll tell you what’s snotty and elitist: the idea that if you are “too stupid” to know how to root your phone, you are too dumb to appreciate an upgrade anyway, so you don’t matter.
I’ve made an account of the Verge so I can post this to let you guys know:
You people who think that there are people who are too dumb to appreciate an upgrade, so who cares about them?
YOU GUYS ARE SNOTTY ELITISTS.
The “real” point is more simple. If you are an Apple iPhone or iPad (or iPod touch) customer, it doesn’t matter if you are “techy,” or “elitist,” or even “too stupid to care.” You will have the latest possible OS and software on your device.
Apple (the source) releases it, when it’s ready, to ALL supported devices at the same time, and the customer can decide when to install it. It’s not up to Samsung or HTC or Motorola or the wireless carriers. Apple makes it available, and the customer decides. That’s freedom, not this FAKE “openness” of Android.
Really? If I have to “root” or whatever the excuse-of-the-day to make something work right after buying it, I would be really ticked off.
I hope you don’t make all of your purchases this way.
-“Elitist”
@mees, I’m saying android techies are elitist..
@ken1w, I totally agree.
If I get $300 per hour for consulting fees, and it takes me two hours to root my Android POS, I could have bought an unlocked iPhone 4S from Apple for the same money and saved the effort. However, if you’re an Android fanboy taking two hours off from flipping burgers it costs you about $16. That’s the difference.
Something about TouchWiz that makes me want to wash my hands…