> "After two, or even one year, this device becomes too old in Google’s eyes and it refuses to make a newer Android version compatible for the gadget"

What? It's not Google but the carriers and the manufacturers who don't update. Google doesn't earn money (at least not much) from device sales. They make money from app sales and ads. So Google would benefit from updating the devices.

I haven't seen this site before but I'm definitely not going back if their writers are incompetent like that.

Haven't you realized that Google gets all the blame for problems created by the carriers? It's the same old blame game that happened with Microsoft for problems created by their vendors.

Microsoft got most of the grief because of security issues, which weren't dependent on specific hardware configurations ( at least, not always). Sure the BSOD was "normally" caused by a bad driver and Microsoft took flack for that, but on my single Windows machine that I have, I can't recall the last time I saw a BSOD.

Or... google could crack down and force the carriers to make their "customizations" add-ons which would be installed after an os update and could be removed if they were incompatible / the user didn't want them. This way every user could have the latest and greatest from google while still allowing the carrier to add their craptastic customizations on top of the standard OS.

I think the UI customizations are less of a problem than drivers.

Yeah, this. If it were just about the OS customization Google could release a PC/Mac tool which would flash the latest build of Android onto any phone with an unlocked bootloader (which is most of them these days). The user could choose to continue with the phone manufacture's default build or get the latest "pure" Android.

Where this idea falls apart quickly is drivers for custom hardware. There's just no way Google could take on the driver development for every phone (both because it is just too much work and also because lots of phones have proprietary drivers running against hardware that isn't publicly documented).

Absolutely. From what I understand, one of the big reasons ICS updates have been so much more difficult than Gingerbread ones is that the driver interfaces changed for a lot more things in that jump (exacerbated by the tablet-only Honeycomb in between).

Most of the people I know who have Android phones don't care what version of the OS they're running. In fact, the UI changed so much between Donut and ICS, they might prefer their phones not to be updated.

The amount that people in our circles care about phone software is much, much higher than most people who go into Verizon every two years to get a new handset with a fresh battery.

I totally 100% agree with you, but the counterargument would be that people are very unhappy when they go to download a new game and it doesn't run on their phone or it runs badly.

I fear that, for most Android devices, that $5 per device or $20 lifetime upgrade cost would not make economical sense.

Reason: if paying for the upgrade is optional, few users will choose to pay that money ($20 for a $100 or 'free with your subscription' phone?), meaning that the cost of making the firmware update may be larger than the revenue. And no, releasing new firmware is not 'just compiling'; there likely is quite some extra work to make the updated OS, targeted at more powerful hardware, work even reasonably well on that 'old' phone.

Charging all your users that $20 only works if you are Apple, Microsoft, or Blackberry. If you sell cheap or midrange Android devices, your users would likely just run to your competitors (it may be possible to prevent that for high end Android devices, but it is harder if you cannot differentiate on your OS; Samsung may have cracked that's but I am not sure about that)

I used to get really irritated with whatever phone manufacturer I bought from was holding out on updates. However, we now have enough data to have a good idea of the tendencies with each carrier/manufacturer. For example, if you choose Verizon, you know you're going to be waiting a while. My next phone will not be with Verizon.

I definitely understand that some people only get decent service from one or two carriers in their area (and don't have as much as a choice), so this is probably more aimed at those who have a few options to choose from: I really do think it's time to vote with our feet.

If updates are a priority for you, pick a manufacturer and carrier that have a decent update record (if you have the choice). If you don't have a choice, complain publicly and loudly about your carrier's update practices, and maybe someone will hear one of us.

Updates as part of customer support after you make the sale should really be common sense and something all manufacturers should do during the average time of owning a smartphone, which is probably around 2 years.

Unfortunately, since most manufacturers are used to releasing a new model every 2 weeks, they just don't care about stuff as much as they should. Paying money for upgrades might give them an extra incentive to do it, but I'm not sure it will work. Would they offer the upgrades for 2 years even if they sell 200,000 units of a certain model and only 2,000 people pay for those upgrades? But as I said, it shouldn't even be needed.

While I agree manufacturer ADD is a problem, I reject the idea that every phone should come with two years of support. Those of us who buy high-end phones on-contract forget that off-contract Android phones can get very, very cheap. Sub $100 isn't hard to find and I've heard of devices as cheap as $50. If not providing updates is what helps make what would have been a $100 phone into an $80 one, I think that is a reasonable tradeoff for a manufacturer and their customers to make.

Today that no-updates line is being drawn in the wrong place and it really shouldn't apply to phones sold on-contract, but that doesn't mean the possibility should be banned entirely.

That's fine if manufacturers state upfront what you are getting when you purchase. If they won't push major software updates, just say so, so I can make an informed decision.

Edit: Strange use of personal pronouns.