Apple updates seem to rollout much faster, with fewer impediments from carriers. Why can’t this be the case with Samsung phones after Samsung has tested the update? Why the extra barrier for Android phones?
Apple updates seem to rollout much faster, with fewer impediments from carriers. Why can’t this be the case with Samsung phones after Samsung has tested the update? Why the extra barrier for Android phones?
It is not the fault of Samsung, but your shitty US providers who have to test the software on their network first, remove stuff they think you don’t need, and add their own shitty stuff aka bloatware etc.
Samsung released OUI6 on October 30th. What happens after that, is the fault of providers.
I absolutely agree that the US carriers slow down releases, and make them worse at the same time. But something I didn’t see mentioned here is that Samsung releases updates for different models at different times. For example the S23 series gets updated first, followed by 5 series foldables and the S22 series, then the 4 series foldables and s21 series etc. and this is all looking strictly at unlocked models with no carrier interference.
I understand carriers getting in the way, but I think it’s fair to question why Samsung models have a tiered rollout compared to Apple updating all models at the same time.
I believe part of it is due to how similar the Apple models are from one year to the next 5 years.
Samsung has a rather different feature set across the models (even in the early years). Not to mention, rather different hardware across the models (in the early years). With a different mentality on software updates in the past, and for long term manageability, I understood that they have different teams in charge of the updates for each phone model.
It’ll be a case of getting the apps/software working for the one with the best and latest set of technology, then selectively dumb down or restrict usability for each subsequent model.
Til they do a massive re-org, I doubt the distribution method can easily change.
Resource allocation. You can’t keep a massive team to maintain operating systems for different lineups. Even if they did, coordination would be a nightmare to give the same experience across different devices i.e, one having an issue for something which the other does not. Plus it’s a business, Samsung needs to make a profit for doing all this else it’s a moot point. So you first develop on the common codebase and then tackle device specific features. 50-70% of the developers would be the same who will work on these devices. So you need to stagger the releases simply because you don’t or in fact can’t have separate resources which the Apple can afford with just one lineup.
Just for clarity. The carriers are just testing. They aren’t adding or removing anything. You can tell this because the last beta build became stable, this is usually the case. So the carriers aren’t approving apps after the fact. So it’s not carriers adding and removing anything because one the software packages don’t work like that. That means the carriers would need to build their own updates from source and prior to cranking out a build adjust the packages included inside. Now that’s neither here nor there because it’s not like you get it sooner. But all that time is used to test. Not change builds.
Carriers selectively disable features on Samsung S series phones that they don’t like. For example, I understand that wifi-sharing/wifi hot-spot is actually hobbled on US phones. Some carriers want wifi-calling enable, some want it specifically disabled. I think i ever saw a list of over 100 items that carriers want Samsung to “fix” (like crippling wifi hotspot) before the updated firmware can be released.
Still waiting here on my factory unlocked 23 Ultra, that I have on Spectrum Mobile.
well what about S22, A54, A53 etc.? spoke releases for every supported device on the same day, also in Europe where carriers don’t customize android it’s the same thing, latest S series then gradually other devices
i bought my phone directly from samsung fully unlocked. I only recieved it on 16th.