yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Droid Charge] buhohitr:
** You have to be on the other side to make a judgement, what happen if Samsung doesn't think they suck like you said. They may think they did a pretty good job??

The moral of the story is if you think you better, do it yourself, if you have need their code so we can make a copy then...case end here.

---------- Post added at 10:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:05 AM ----------
[Verizon Droid Charge] luis86dr:
Trust me, I agree with you on that. Its just a matter of when it all balls down to it at the end. Android is famous for it being open sourced. Which at one point it was fully open sourced. My problem is with company's holding back certain things (RIL IN OUR SITUATION) for no apparent reason. When it all comes down to it, its their product and they can do as they please. Yes they can have code improvements seeing as its their product, but that doesn't mean our devs can't as well. Hell, Jt is working miracles on ICS for us. Now imagine what he could do what the RIL. At the end of the day we all have our opinions. Just my two cents.
[Verizon Droid Charge] buhohitr:
I'm OK with us blamed on Samsung (marketting, business unit, president etc,,) for politically not releasing the RIL, but I disagree on calling their Dev sucks.

I'm running FP1 right now and it's damn good. JT is a smart developer, sure he have the ICS, but we haven't use it yet, is it bug free? I doubt it. We are talking about an OS being on the market over a year, used by thousand of people vs a development O/S (not even qualify to be beta yet) that only test by a few!
[Verizon Droid Charge] charlie_c:
The Samsung RIL is proprietary as far as I'm aware, not open source. Companies don't usually give away or openly share IP. That's why it's considered IP. We're not "entitled" to it any more than we're entitled to free stock in Samsung because we bought one of their phones. Of course I'd like it, but I don't expect it to come from anywhere except the hard work of developers.
[Verizon Droid Charge] JihadSquad:
This. With a razr maxx you don't need a custom kernel. It is fast enough to do anything reasonable and the battery lasts forever. Unless you insist on AOSP it will be amazing.
[Verizon Droid Charge] buhohitr:
agree 100%.

---------- Post added at 10:53 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------

Nicely put! I just don't want to mis-guide ppl here with "my dev is better than your dev" thinking.
[Verizon Droid Charge] KarateExplosion6:
Doubt it will launch with Ice Cream Sandwich... But, I have to think it will launch with the promise of being updated in 2012.
[Verizon Droid Charge] imnuts:
LOL, thanks for the laugh. They are doing better, but I wouldn't say they are good about releasing it. The reason that HTC does better with getting AOSP going is because of Qualcomm and Code Aurora, not HTC. HTC was (almost) taken to court over releasing kernel source code in the past, and for many of their devices, people have had issues getting source released.
[Verizon Droid Charge] jager420:
Lol NP...Im just sayin..you and I both know they be getting AOSP a hell of alot quicker than the rest...minus the nexus of course;)
[Verizon Droid Charge] KarateExplosion6:
Android 4.0 report card: Which manufacturers are failing?
[Verizon Droid Charge] imnuts:
What does HTC phones getting AOSP have to do with HTC releasing source code? The only thing ANY manufacturer is obligated to release is the kernel source as it is covered by the GPL. Everything else comes from people reverse engineering, hacking to use the stock binaries, or help from outside. Qualcomm setup Code Aurora which helped several devices get AOSP AFAIK. It also helps that nearly every HTC device is identical (more or less), so the hacks are easy to port from one device to another. Either way, your original statement about source code has nothing to do with getting AOSP.
[Verizon Droid Charge] BleedsOrangeandBlue:
how do you propose that Samsung has tricked themselves into believing that they've done a good job releasing ICS for the Charge when they haven't released ICS for the Charge?

We're not discussing something subjective here.
[Verizon Droid Charge] buhohitr:
Pure simple, possible marketing/Management decision? or possible hardware limitation? But they did ICS for their other devices already! they know their hardware better than anyone here.
[Verizon Droid Charge] BleedsOrangeandBlue:
Samsung was one of the manufacturers who agreed to the alliance/coalition to keep their devices updated for 18 months after release, which is a far cry from your idea of their "marketing decisions". If what you suggest is true, then they pulled quite the "switch-a-roo" on us as consumers, and we have every right to be mad. That would mean we've gone from Samsung making decisions that we don't agree with to downright being lied to.

That said, the alliance was probably a pipedream, and I've come to terms with that. However, the fact that they would not release code that would allow our kickass enthusiast developers to port it themselves is kind of insulting if they're not going to go through the trouble of developing it themselves.

If you're ok with writing it off as a hardware limitation, then fine. I appreciate your unabashed, unapologetic sympathizing with Samsung. However, the notion that "daddy knows best" is why most of us aren't Apple consumers. If it is a hardware limitation that they think will make it a negative experience (and for the record, I believe that you're wrong and its more of a resource issue on their end), they still have nothing to lose by releasing to us what is needed to do it ourselves. Again, I ask, "why not??'

I don't want my manufacturer to have totalitarian control, and when I made the switch from iOS, I thought that was what I was getting with Android. Guess I was mistaken.
[Verizon Droid Charge] luis86dr:
It surely isn't a hardware limitation. Thats facts. Jt's Ics build runs smooth as butter. So that theory is out the window. Samsung is already knee deep in it as their not following up on their agreement with Google. To be honest as I said before its their product and they can do as they please. But I'm sure this will leave a bad taste for consumers on future purchases. Myself being one of them.
[Verizon Droid Charge] jager420:
Oh brother :rolleyes:
[Verizon Droid Charge] kakistocrat:
For all of us drooling over the prospect of ICS, maybe JT would be able to work faster if we sent him some beer money ;)

Just sayin...
[Verizon Droid Charge] buhohitr:
A Quote from Imnuts (a well know and creator of PBJ kernel):

"The problem isn't the amount of RAM, it is the amount of space allocated for /system on the device. If they would include TouchWiz, it likely would not have enough space left for everything. " They also have to compliance with Verizon bloatware.

We all, speculating here, maybe they will release ICS?? who knows!
[Verizon Droid Charge] imnuts:
There was never a given time frame when the 18 month update window was to start, what devices would fall under the agreement, and what was required for updates. For all we know, it didn't start until the latest Nexus was released.

And telling Samsung to release the code that we need to get AOSP functioning would be like going to MS and telling them to release the code for WP7 so you can port it/customize it. It is proprietary, and just because Google open-sourced Android doesn't mean that everyone else has to as well. The code is released under a license that doesn't require modifications to be published.
[Verizon Droid Charge] jager420:
Well they should ;)
[Verizon Droid Charge] KarateExplosion6:
Well, interesting stuff over at Verizon. As you may know, the deal VZW was running for people to get Revolutions and Charges FREE with a new 2-year contract is now over. So, I checked VZW's web site...

The Rezound had pricing cut to $49 and the Revolution is only being carrier as Certified Pre-Owned. The Charge is completely sold out... but is still listed at $99! That's the same price as the Stratosphere. The website claims VZW will be able to ship more devices by 4/9.

What do you guys think? Is VZWs website just taking order, expecting to get leftover Charge inventory from all of their retail locations by 4/9? Has anyone stopped into a retail location--do they have the Charge still?

Are we EOL?
[Verizon Droid Charge] JihadSquad:
I went to a VZW authorized retailer (have yet to find any corporate stores in Madison near the university) a couple weeks ago and they still had accessories for the Charge. They had very few actual phones there for display, and the only working one was the LG spectrum. All the other ones were plastic mock-ups, including the Razr, Rezound, Nexus, and surprisingly the Droid x2
[Verizon Droid Charge] BleedsOrangeandBlue:
I never said that they were required or obligated to do anything, just that I'm of the opinion that they should. I think your first paragraph is a bit of a cop out... if they're of the opinion that its right to keep their devices updated for 18 months, its beyond BS for that to start only with new devices. Sure, the agreement may not apply, but they've agreed to the principle behind it as well.

Again, I'm not under the delusion that they have to do anything, but I do believe that they should. They've really just got three options here:

-Update us to ICS

-Release the code required for talented gents like you to continue to do their job for them

-Not do anything, pissing off and ultimately losing customers

If they don't release it, I don't really care, I'll move on when my time comes. I just kind of took offense to the moronic reasoning displayed by the guy I was arguing with that Samsung shouldn't release anything because we're mean and told them that they suck. The conversation spiraled on from there.
[Verizon Droid Charge] imnuts:
I could see it applying to new devices only. When VZW and Samsung were negotiating the terms of the device deal, it may not have been scheduled to receive another update, and since the deal was agreed upon before the 18 month update agreement came out, Samsung and VZW may not have budgeted to support another OS upgrade. The cost would be development, testing, and technical support to the end user. While you are right, they should still abide by it, there is nothing saying they won't agree to update the Charge to ICS, nor is there anything saying they won't. Either way, they are never going to release the proprietary code that they have as it is likely shared among several current, as well as future devices.
[Verizon Droid Charge] shrike1978:
Also, I'm pretty sure some of the code is not even fully owned by them and they couldn't release it even if they wanted to. I'm betting at least parts of the RIL code were supplied by VIA Telecom.
[Verizon Droid Charge] ilovesoad:
You do realize that the pissed off users account for a few percent. Maybe 5. The overwhelming majority won't care so long as their device works, and wouldn't know what ICS even is. Think about it. Verizon knows their target market.
[Verizon Droid Charge] BleedsOrangeandBlue:
Again, I realize that the binding part of the agreement (if there is any) will only apply to new phones, but you have to admit that its ridiculous for them to proclaim "we think its important that we keep our phones updated, but its only important for the ones we make after today". The terms of the agreement isn't the important part, its the principle of the agreement. If they truly believed that keeping devices current was best for that length of time, then it should apply to all their devices within that frame. Since they're not taking that stance, the agreement reeks of being nothing more than a marketing ploy. Obviously spending more money than they have to (by developing software) isn't in their best financial interests, so it makes business sense for them to only apply it where the agreement mandates (ie: future devices). However, the agreement was about doing something in the consumers' best interests, so their strategy of only following it to the letter (vice the spirit) sends a message loud and clear to me. Can you guess what that message is?

The fact that they've not committed either way isn't necessarily reassuring... it just means they're being intentionally non-committal. Again, if they think devices should stay current for a year and a half, it should already be announced that we're getting it at some point, regardless of whether there is an ETA on it.

All that said, if tossing us aside is in their best business interests, I totally get that. It sucks for us, and it means they won't be getting my money anymore. But that's also a business decision. It goes both ways, and I'm ok with that.

I'm sure that's true, however Samsung obviously feels that keeping devices updated is important (because they agreed to the 18 month alliance thing) and they've shown they think the aftermarket development community is important (by reaching out to the CM team to make sure it would be available for the SGS2). You can say that there is no reason for them to care, but they've indicated, through their past actions, that they do to some degree. They're just maybe not the best at seeing it through.

And the cell phone industry accounted for 15 billion dollars in the final quarter of 2011. 5% of that is $750 million dollars. That's $3 billion a year that you're (in your hypothetical 5%) not even trying to court. Chump change for a company of this magnitude? Maybe... but that's a lot of market share to leave untapped when they could spend a little bit to try to reach out to it.
[Verizon Droid Charge] charlie_c:
There isn't any. It's voluntary and nothing more than a goal. No enforcement, no guarantee, just a stated goal. Also, you have to remember that our phone was in development well before this goal was ever publicly stated. The things that would help with meeting this 18-month goal of support (like more RAM, more space for system files, etc) need to be known and incorporated during the development phase. There's no reason to think this was the case.

A new car that is introduced at the same time as new federal safety regulations will not be held to those standards, because the car has already been created. The regulations are for governing future development, not things that already exist.

My assumption is that manufacturers, going forward from that agreement, would try and make sure their hardware was sufficient to support at least 18 months of software upgrades and that their UIs were internally consistent enough to make the upgrades easier and quicker to deploy.

I of course hope we get ICS from somewhere, but it's a long, long stretch to try and hold them to that 18 month goal for a phone that was launched before that was ever announced.
[Verizon Droid Charge] BleedsOrangeandBlue:
Let's take your example and run with it.

Why do you suppose that car manufacturers aren't held to those safety regulations? I'd argue that its safe to say its because they can't adhere to a regulation that doesn't exist yet, right?

If that's true, and the phone manufacturers before were only capable of creating devices that have "relevant" hardware 6 months from production, why are we to believe that they're now capable of seeing what software demands are going to be over a year out? How can they hold themselves to a standard that doesn't yet exist?

To ask another way, look at one of your own sentences;

"(like more RAM, more space for system files, etc) need to be known and incorporated during the development phase"

Short of a crystal ball, how will they know these things that "need to be known during the development phase" if the software hasn't been developed yet?

Conversely, do you think that they were limiting the hardware they were putting in phones to only minimally meet the software demands of their current OS? I don't, as the progression we've seen in hardware over the lifespan of gingerbread has increased pretty significantly, which would lead one to believe that hardware development (and not simply meeting minimal software requirements) is what is driving what is actually making it into the devices.

By your framework, they're either incapable of making a phone relevant for more than six months or they've been intentionally not doing it. I don't see (based on technological progression) how anyone could argue the latter, which would leave only the former. If the former is true, why would they be able to TRIPLE that time frame now? You think they weren't "trying really, really hard" before? Or do you think they'll be able to predict the future and know what the software reqs for the next major iteration of Android will be and are focusing their development on that?

Does that mean that the 18 month thing is just a sham and isn't even a realistic goal to be set?

How should I feel about the Thunderbolt getting ICS? It was released even earlier than the Charge. Is that an indictment against Samsung? I'm genuinely asking...not trying to be combative.

Again, I'm not trying to "hold" them to the agreement. If you quoted anything more than the first half of the first sentence of that entire paragraph, then it would be clear that "holding them to it" is exactly NOT what I'm trying to suggest.
[Verizon Droid Charge] charlie_c:
I don't know why you're over complicating this argument. It's not difficult to slightly over engineer something to increase the useful life of it. If there is an expectation that you need to future proof something more than you were previously, all you need to do is improve the common bottleneck areas that I mentioned previously (RAM, system storage space).

Going back to the car analogy, it's not hard for an auto manufacturer to design a car that exceeds current CAFE standards with the expectation that future CAFE standards will be more demanding (or increase crash protection/number of airbags with the expectation that crash protection regulations will become more stringent).

Obviously there is no "crystal ball", so they may not be able to foresee regulation changes requiring a higher hood line to improve pedestrian impact safety, but the general idea is pretty simple. Look at requirements a few years ago. Look at requirements now. Plot a linear or exponential line if you want and you can predict roughly where they'll be in a few years from now. Phone manufacturers have a few smart employees, I'm sure they can figure it out.

Again, you're making this very difficult and convoluted, but it's pretty simple. All it means, quite simply, is that there is now a target. Before, there was no target. As far as I know, before, they could release a phone, and as long as the hardware was basically sufficient for the launch OS, what was the problem? What was the expectation that had been set for the length of product support cycle? What were the guidelines? If there were no expectations and no guidelines, then manufacturers could release devices with whatever hardware they wanted. It was driven by component cost and marketing.

The major difference that should be obvious now is that there are guidelines and expectations that they can use to base their decisions on that did not exist before.

As far as the TB, you can think what you want. They made better decisions in some areas regarding components specs and design maybe, and I'm sure they work internally very differently than Samsung. Maybe it is a indictment against Samsung, but I'd say it's more indicative of how flawed and inconsistent the Android support cycle has been for the different devices.
[Verizon Droid Charge] luis86dr:
I just saw that the Aviator is launching with 2.3.6. Probably Fp1.
[Verizon Droid Charge] JihadSquad:
WTF is up with aviator now? I live in one of the US Cellular lte areas and they have a CDMA only galaxy s II or something. Now they are launching LTE and downgrading to this phone?
[Verizon Droid Charge] imnuts:
Lets say you buy a new computer, knowing that there is going to be an OS update for it in 2 months. Is the OEM that made your computer responsible for updating you to the latest OS? Or even updating any software and drivers to be compatible with it? Why should a smartphone be any different? Cost factor? You think it's free for the OEMs to produce the updates and then support them? If you think it's so easy, why don't you do it yourself? Android is opensource, and a lot of the work is already done, so why don't you get the phone updated for all of us?
[Verizon Droid Charge] luis86dr:
Yeah, seems to be that way. I mean this isn't a horrible device but they could have picked better imo.

Sent from my Droid Charge

Follow me on Twitter @lmrtech
[Verizon Droid Charge] JihadSquad:
True but I guess that there is no current Galaxy S II CDMA/LTE so they would have to build an entirely new one instead of rebranding an existing phone like they currently do. Still something like galaxy nexus would have been nice.
[Verizon Droid Charge] jager420:
I agree with what your saying but you cant blame it all on Samsung. I bet you Samsung can give a ICS build with TouchWiz on it. BUT Verizon says "dont forget to add all this BS". I think if Verizon didn't REQUIRE all that BS to be put in we would get updates a lot quicker. Dont blame just Samsung. Verizon should be blamed to. Again tho you cant expect to get ICS on 512mb ram w/ touchwiz and verizon bloat. Its just not gonna happen. Go donate to JT if you want some ICS..Money always talks ;)

FYI: They did update us to Gingerbread and gave us another update (fp1). Maybe didn't update to ICS but they didn't totally forget us.

---------- Post added at 12:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 PM ----------

Good way of putting that.. agreed:D
[Verizon Droid Charge] DirgeExtinction:
Remember that not even the international carrier unlocked Galaxy S is getting ICS. I'm guessing ICS + TW is too much for it.
[Verizon Droid Charge] jager420:
GRRR..i should just buy a nexus from now on :p
[Verizon Droid Charge] BrandedDays:
Agreed that doing it yourself is key, that being said. I do expect some life of the system support. Most of the time when a PC is being sold 2 months prior to a new say Windows release you have the option to buy the upgrade at that point in time. Now that is more of a marketing thing so that you'll buy now rather than wait for the new system to be out.

Additionally given the contract system where most of us are locked into our phone by the carrier there should be some loyalty to the customer to support the updates. Manufactures don't have to pursue as many models as they can get out the door. They could pursue a core set so they could maintain support over a set period of time like 24 months or 36 months. Not necessary but feels to me like the right thing to do. Just saying that I think manufacturer's should have some dedication to life cycle of phones rather than pumping them out without a long term plan for each device.

But back to reality, luckily there are dedicated developers that support those of us willing to get ours hands a little dirty. With that effort we can get a pretty broad selection which I think is more to your point that if you want it get your hands dirty and go get it. Which I agree with.