Is Samsung Blocking Updates To Froyo?

jfruhlinger writes "One of the complaints about Android is its fragmentation; many different versions of the OS are out there in the wild, and often users are held back from upgrading by their hardware or their carrier. But now a disturbing rumor has it that Samsung is strong-arming T-Mobile to prevent an over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.2 (Froyo) for Samsung Vibrant owners. The reason? Samsung wants people to shell out for the new Vibrant 4G — which, other than the fact that it ships running Froyo, is largely identical to the Vibrant." Reader CWmike contributes an informative link if you'd like to know which Android vendors are actually delivering timely upgrades.

Re:Open Platform?

[malkuth23]

The Samsung Galaxy S comes with Eclair. It can be upgraded to Froyo if you have the patience to work with Kies... Maybe you are thinking of the Nexus S.

It's still early days for Android

[mattbee]

We're still working out which vendors are going to support their phones for the long run, like Apple does with their iPhone, and which ones are expecting you buy a new one every year, like Nokia. My expectation in 2011 is that if I spend £500 on a new phone, I expect to get software updates for as long as the hardware is viable, *especially* when the manufacturer isn't bearing the cost of building the software! If Samsung don't deny this rumour and confirm they'll be issuing minor Android updates, I don't see how they expect to compete against Apple, and every other Android vendor out there. The ridiculous, wasteful "fire and forget" model of smartphone development is long dead, and manufacturers that try it will fix it, or exit the market pretty quickly.

Even 8 years ago, I never understood why Nokia didn't try to sell their phones as long-term investments, and ship better software for their premium phones as they developed it, rather than trying to hawk us a new bit of plastic every 18 months.

Standard operating procedure.

[MrCrassic]

I frequent XDA a lot and the warnings were clear. If you're not buying a Nexus device (Nexus One/Nexus S), you will most likely be left in the dark for an official upgrade path. The G1 and the original, slower Galaxy, for example, never received an official upgrade past 1.6. Personally, I don't think carriers/OEMs have a lot of demand from most of their consumer base to engineer upgrades. This news might gain much more attention since it's blatantly obvious that Samsung was gunning for obsoleting one of their flagship phones so quickly, but unless video calling really takes off (doesn't seem to have done so yet), it's not the biggest deal for many.

From a technical standpoint, it's completely irrelevant. Save for the upgraded modem and the front-facing camera, it's the original Vibrant. (They probably added more tricks in the hardware to make rooting harder, though.) Additionally, it's pretty trivial [xda-developers.com] to add a front-facing camera to the current Vibrant and there is an unofficial carrier-engineered version of Froyo for it floating around on the Internet. For starters, it has Wifi Calling natively bundled into it. It's also somewhat faster. I flashed my Dad's Vibrant with it before I gave it to him as a Christmas gift and it works amazingly for him.

Just the mere existence of that ROM suggests that an update might be around the corner. The question, though, is how wide T-Mobile and Samsung is making that corner for people.

Real Reason

[canajin56]

The real reason they are stonewalling on the 2.2 update for Vibrant is this: When they released the 2.2 update for the Vibrant in Canada, the update worked fine for a week or two, and then like clockwork bricked a huge percentage of the phones that updated. And when I say bricked, I'm not being liberal with that word, after a week or so running the Samsung 2.2 update, the SD card would become corrupt, and recovery mode would be unable to format it. My wife and I both have Vibrants, and it happened to them both one day apart. Samsung has been silent on the matter. Not surprising they'd avoid moving sending the 2.2 update out to US Vibrant owners, and also not surprising that they're refusing to explain why. Bell at least is fixing them, but lots of people on the XDA forum are saying their "repaired" phones are bricking again in short order.

Re:screw vies

[Panoptes]

Samsung has a reputation for not providing OS updates in the hope that Galaxy owners will fork out for a new phone. Visit any of the Samsung user forums around the web and you'll find this to be the hot discussion topic. In spite of producing good phones (mine is a Galaxy Spica/Tab) there are annoying idiosyncrasies that Samsung has persistently refused to address - such as limited Bluetooth functionality, driver issues with USB-PC connection, and no easy way to hook up a keyboard. My next phone is very unlikely to be a Samsung.

Re:Open Platform?

[kangsterizer]

Actually you can upgrade via heimdal, odin or even just "self update" it - read XDA forums for details. I never use KIES - it's really really bad software :p
The Galaxy S also has GingerBread through community ports but it's not fully functional for now. (Froyo 2.2.1 is through Samsung updates)

Re:If you want Latest & Greatest, buy a Nexus

[Culture20]

This "entitlement" is because we realize that these phones are actually computers running largely general purpose software, and there are security vulnerabilities that need patched. This is like Gateway, Dell, or eMachines colluding with Comcast to block WindowsXP security update requests to update.microsoft.com so that you'll buy a new computer when your XP box gets owned.