If you, like me, are a US owner of a Samsung Galaxy S phone, then you’re still asking yourself one major question: Why don’t I have Froyo yet? (Well, okay…HYPOTHETICALLY, if you’re like me, you might already have hypothetically installed a test build of Froyo for your Galaxy S phone.) US Galaxy S owners have been waiting for a while now for an official update to take them to Android 2.2. What’s been the hold-up? Well, a tipster claiming to have some inside knowledge wants us to think that it’s the cost to the carrier for the update that is keeping Froyo from seeing the US shores:
To explain the political situation, first, a primer on how phone firmware upgrades work for carriers. When a carrier decides to sell a phone, a contract is usually written between the phone manufacturer and the carrier. In this contract, the cost of updates (to the carrier) is usually outlined. Updates are usually broken into several types: critical updates, maintenance updates, and feature updates. Critical updates are those that resolve a critical bug in the phone, such as the phone overheating. Maintenance updates involve routine updates to resolve bugs and other issues reported by the carrier. Finally, feature updates add some new feature in software that wasn’t present before. Critical updates are usually free, maintenance updates have some maintenance fee associated with them, and feature updates are usually costly. In the past, most phone updates would mainly consist of critical and maintenance updates. Carriers almost never want to incur the cost of a feature update because it is of little benefit to them, adds little to the device, and involves a lot of testing on the carrier end. Android has changed the playing field, however – since the Android Open Source Project is constantly being updated, and that information being made widely available to the public, there is pressure for the phone to be constantly updated with the latest version of Android. With most manufacturers, such as HTC, Motorola, etc. This is fine and considered a maintenance upgrade. Samsung, however, considers it a feature update, and requires carriers to pay a per device update fee for each incremental Android update.
Now, here’s where the politics come in: most U.S. carriers aren’t very happy with Samsung’s decision to charge for Android updates as feature updates, especially since they are essentially charging for the Android Open Source Project’s efforts, and the effort on Samsung’s end is rather minimal. As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, all U.S. carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop their fees and give the update to the carriers. The situation has panned out differently in other parts of the world, but this is the situation in the United States.
Some of you might have noticed Verion’s Fascinate updated, but without 2.2 : This is a result of a maintenance agreement Samsung must honor combined with Verizon’s unwillingness to pay the update fees. In short, Android 2.2 is on hold for Galaxy Sphones until the U.S. carriers and Samsung reach a consensus.
Some might wonder why I didn’t deliver this over a more legitimate news channel – the short answer: I don’t want to lose my job. I do, however, appreciate transparency, which is why I’m here.
So is this information reliable? Obviously, we don’t really know…tipster information is always sketchy. So, let’s examine it from this angle: Is this information BELIEVABLE? Honestly…I vote no. While cost is always an issue when dealing with consumer/carrier relations, this one is hard for me to stomach, largely because no US carrier — not even one — has opted for the update that apparently is ready. Surely, with Froyo hitting Galaxy S phones outside the US and there being Galaxy S phones on all 4 major US carriers, SOMEBODY would shell out a little extra cash just to have bragging rights of being the only US carrier with Froyo Galaxy S phones. Secondly, why would carriers outside the US be willing to pony up the extra cash, but US carriers are not? Is Samsung charging more for US carriers?
Samsung has not yet refuted this statement, but personally, I’m having a hard time buying it. Seems to me that it’s more likely that the update delay has more to do distributing across multiple carriers, each of whom has their own little “tweaks” to the OS to bring it to their carrier. It’s difficult to know what’s REALLY going on behind the scenes, but we know that several carriers have beta and/or tested versions going on, but nothing has become official yet.
Stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted should the situation thing. But as of now, the US Galaxy S has yet to see Froyo, and cost MIGHT be an issue as to the why. But when it becomes available (and it will), we’ll keep you posted.
[via IntoMobile]