In a highly ironic and appropriate twist, Samsung has chosen Festivus – the day of the Airing of Grievances – to put out the word that Ice Cream Sandwich, the Android 4.0 release, will not be made available for the Samsung Galaxy S line, nor for the original (pre-Honeycomb) Galaxy Tab. Why? According to Samsung’s statement as reported by The Verge, “The company’s argument is that they lack sufficient RAM and ROM to run the new OS alongside TouchWiz and other ‘experience-enhancing’ software.”
The Galaxy S first dropped in 2010, in March. So with three months to go, the first adopters have officially been end-of-lifed on OS upgrades, because in a choice between the latest version of the OS and their own proprietary UI gimmick, Samsung has chosen the gimmick.
Say what you like about Apple, but when you buy an iPhone, you know (based on four years’ results so far) that you will get full upgrades to the OS for the life of the phone’s 2-year contract. The original iPhone got the update to iOS 2 (inasmuch as its hardware could support it; obviously GPS and 3G didn’t come with) and the iPhone 3GS got updated to iOS 4 without a fight. Beyond that, there’s even support for iOS 5, so if your iPhone is over two years old, you still get some of the new functionality.
This isn’t necessary. Maybe in the early days of Android it made sense to slap your own UI on there, but Ice Cream Sandwich in its pure form (inasmuch as such can be had) is generally regarded as the best Android yet and doesn’t need to be tweaked up by OEMs. Nevertheless, Samsung has made their call. The real issues is that Samsung isn’t party to the notional Android upgrade agreement from a few months back…not that it helps, as that deal is allegedly for May 2001 and forward. So if you bought your Android phone before this summer, it’s best to assume that you already have the newest version of the OS you’ll ever get.
Barring rooting and hacking, of course, and the usual suspects will sarcastically post compile commands and point out how open Android is so all you have to do is apply a custom build of the OS and you’re fine. And the overwhelming non-geek majority of phone consumers will throw their hands in the air and line up for an iPhone, because at least you can be confident that you’ll get the full two years’ support for it.