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As Motorola introduced its new handsets today—including the Droid RAZR HD—it crowed about how tightly integrated it was with Android. Which makes sense! Because Google owns both Android and Motorola. Synergy is a beautiful thing!
So why does the Droid RAZR HD launch with a year-old operating system when a new one came out months ago? Don’t tell me it’s some dumb skin you want to slap on there. Whatever skin you come up with will be worse than raw Jelly Bean and you know it. THE COMPANY THAT OWNS YOU KNOWS IT, TOO.
This is Android’s biggest problem and developers’ biggest problem and consumers’ biggest problem and something we keep saying but thought would be fixed by now but it’s not so ugh nothing ever changes blah. Yes, the Droid RAZR HD should be getting a Jelly Bean update “by the end of the year.” But that’s not now, it’s not guaranteed, and it’s no excuse.
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It can’t be that big a problem for consumers when there is 1.3 million Android devices activated daily. A problem for developers, though, it is.
Well, certification for a new version of OS can take a sizeable chunk of time, with all the testing that needs to be done for every aspect of the phone, from radio chips to cpus, bluetooth stacks etc. And for a global release, the phone will need to be locally certified in up to 80 different countries.
Jelly bean also wasn’t available when they ramped up manufacture.
So; either hold back manufacture until certification is done and release the phone at the end of the year or, manufacture the phone now, sell the phone now and release an OTA update.
Your logic has no place here!
It’s logic, but there is a flaw. If Samsung have upgraded the Nexus to JB already then surely it’s possible to have tested JB fully by now on a Motorola device.
No flaw on ironnoreverse part the fact that Samsun Nexus is pure android unlike a Motorolas device which has motorola integrated software
Well, though I shouldn’t have compared it to Nexus really, what I’m saying is Motorola are being a bit slow with their particular customisation of JB. Samsung are started to roll theirs out next week apparently.
Having spent a lot of time with both JellyBean and Sense 4.1, it’s my opinion that OEM software does enhance the UX. There’s things in Sense that just aren’t available on stock, and third party apps sometimes perform worse with a less slick UI. There are other reasons for preferring Sense over stock ROMs for my phone particularly (no access to the imaging processor, for starters), but I’d say the majority of OEM GUIs benefit the consumer.
“a new one came out months ago” there’s your answer. It takes a lot longer than “a few months” to develop a phone, they can’t just stop halfway through and decide to put a different OS on there.
Is this really how bad the US Giz has got? Glad I jumped ship when I did.
From a long standing tech writer such ignorance can only be deliberate.
1. The phones released today were in development BEFORE Google Bought (or even Bid) for Motorola. Once you finalise a product it takes a major amount of disruption to make changes to it, such disruption would effect your launch schedule, since things like cashflow and component orders are planned long in advance this would upset the entire apple cart.
2. Google have said (and are basically being required) that they will run Motorola at arms length, If they started piling in extra people to help Moto move faster they would no doubt be the subject of “Google breaks it’s promises” articles from sensation seeking “journalists”.
3 “This is Android’s biggest problem and developers’ biggest problem and consumers’ biggest problem and something we keep saying but thought would be fixed by now”. The majority of consumers don’t care what version of an OS a phone is running, the issue’s for developers in writing code for more than one OS variant are minor (unless that app relies on a feature not available in older versions obviously) and the fact that you keep saying it just shows your stupidity. 1.3 million activations a day and over 50% marketshare is a problem that ALL the other OS’s would kill for.
Agreed on all 3 points. My S3 is running ICS and even I am not busting a gut to upgrade to JB. It doesn’t seem the massive step that it was up to ICS. Can anyone say what the killer reason to upgrade is other than “because it’s the latest!”
Google Now & Project Butter although my understanding is that that the latter isn’t as evident on the S3
As you say, the S3 already feels quite buttery. I’ve seen Google now, can’t say it made me want to run out and root my phone then drop a new ROM on there.
I also agree with Darrell, but JB has some really cool features. True, it doesn’t hurt to wait for ota, but man JB is sweet.
The biggest problem is that Google should control the updates not the carrier, if Google looked at how Apple does it with where the device can check for updates and if one is available it allows the download. Apple don’t let Orange or T-Mobile or whoever dictate when they can release the update as it should not affect the carrier, if it does then its badly written OS and shouldn’t be allow to customers anyway.
If the phone you have is capable of running the latest then it should be allowed to install it, it’s not fair on the customer who enjoy Android and want to be able to experience the best possible Android experience available.
I think it’s been more the case that the carriers have insisted on there own branding in the past and that customisation needs extra testing. There seems to be a lot less branding on the newer phones. There is none at all on my S3. Perhaps the likes of Samsung are now considered big enough to dictate to the carriers what should be on there, as Apple have in the past.
Your S3 still uses Samsung’s Touchwiz UI. Branding has reduced but OS customization has replaced it.
HTC have SENSE, Samsung, Touchwiz, Sony have their NXT etc etc
Good point. I guess I’m thinking more of the delay between when a manufacturer says an upgrades is ready and the carrier allows it. Not the time it takes to add extra features to a stock OS.