There's more to a phone than its Android Version Number

[lunaticfiend]

In recent times people have been extremely impatient and have been resorting to create multiple threads on this forum dissing at Samsung for slow Android updates. This spam/rants have been adversely affecting the usability of this forum for other regular users like me, so I decided to use some of my freetime to make this post as a thought for your minds.

If Android version number is the only thing you care about, you've been using the wrong phone and posting on wrong forums. If you think Android version number is the most important part of your phone, you probabably have fallen prey to Google's marketing strategy about releasing "quick" insignificant updates exclusively to their Pixel line of phones and playing catch-up in terms of features with non-AOSP manufacturers like LG and Samsung using custom skins and improvements, all while selling their phones with lackluster hardware.

Additional thoughts:

1. The price you pay for any phone in most cases does not include support for "quick" release of updates. So it's illogical to expect faster updates based on a phone's cost.

2. The most important factor in estimating the time for updates is the type of custom OS/skin running on your phone. Phones running lightly AOSP skins, such as Motorola, Nokia and OnePlus do not require a lot of time for optimising the new Android release for their respective phones. Let's say they can be updated at the same pace as an "Android One" phone if they want to. On the otherhand, phones using heavily modified skins such as Samsung Experience or LG UX or MiUi, need significantly longer time to optimise the new Android releases, and often times they prioritise larger markets and flagship phones.

3. Android updates also need the Manufacturer to integrate the network service provider's settings and optimisations based on the region (firmware), for example Airtel/Jio/Vodafone's VoLTE settings. This leads to updates being rolled out in phases in different countries.

Conclusion:

Prioritise what you need in a phone before purchasing it. If updates are the most important thing for you, go for the Pixel phones which cost higher than Samsung flagships while featuring average build quality and missing hardware features such as wireless charging, headphone jack, expandable memory, etc. If you're looking for something cheaper, but with quick updates, look into Motorola's phones. (Not suggesting OnePlus as despite it running an AOSP skin, it ran into a lot of issues and delays rolling out Oreo, so I'm sure it would annoy you Android version fanatics). As an alternate to Pixel, you can even look out Sony's flagships which are usually the first non Google phones to update to new Android versions.

Now, if you don't care much about software, but rather interested in hardware and offline support, you'd find yourself in the right place within the Samsung ecosystem.

Hope this gives you enough information to help you purchase your next phone and keep this forum free from illogical rants and make it productive! Good day :)

[lipunx]

Atlast found a guy with some senses..
Hat's off Bhai✔️

[thelegend]

Atleast someone makes sense here

[Anonymous]

one more thing 90-95% people dont know the difference between 7.0 and 8.0 only what they know is there is a diff in no and name

[lunaticfiend]

Agreed mate! They're still stuck in gingerbread-icecreamsandwich era when updates usually used to pack a ton of changes. Ever since lollipop, updates have mostly been about things under the hood which doesn't matter much to most of the users here, but still they continue to rant!

[G4G4N]

https://youtu.be/xW6jqhk7yLA

[admin_]

Thanks for sharing your experience with the Community and for taking time to write us. We value your trust, and we will do our best to continue to give you the kind of service you expect.

Be sure to hit ♡ when you find an answer that works for you. For Further assistance, you can get in touch with us via Live Chat option by following- http://livechat.support.samsung.com/Customer_new/IN. You can also connect us via Samsung Members web community by following mentioned url-https://community.samsungmembers.com/en_IN#/