[rogerbinns]

By coincidence HTC haven't received a penny from me other than my very first Android phone on which they took almost a year to upgrade to 2.3. I wouldn't consider another phone from them until they have a sustained track record of updates.

Perhaps the most striking turnabout in the Android space is Sony. Outside they have a reputation for being proprietary, crappy software, quick on the legal guns etc. Within the Android space they are exemplary. XDA love them, and Sony keeps stepping up with specs and software releases.

http://www.xda-developers.com/holiday-guide-2012/oem-of-the-...

[gcb0]

You completely misses the point.

Imagine you buy a computer from DELL with an nvidia card. And it came pre-installed with linux or windows. whatever version of those.

And you can't upgrade to the next kernel or UI, because nvidia won't release the drivers for that board. You have to wait until DELL asks nvidia for a binary blob driver for the new kernel, and then release it as a new linux update that will touch all the software you have.

This is exactly what happens on android.

My old phone is still on 2.3 simply because I can't drive the display and camera and radio on any other version. damn binary blobs. people have used 4.2 on this phone with a convoluted chain of translators for the 2.3 interfaces those binary drivers expect to the recent ones... but it is extremely buggy and messy (wrong memory writes all over the place)

So, the manufacturer's fault here is just not dealing with their providers to grantee drivers update, but ultimately, all of the current manufacturers are crappy in that aspect. you are just choosing one that provides you two versions, which is still dumb. less dumb than restricting yourself to one version, but still not the best way to go.

And it is not like they are defending any super secret information. It is just knee jerk reaction from some lawyers or some sales people trying to make the same margin twice.

...but everyone keep upgrading phones every year, so i think it is fine for everyone and the only sucker is me.

[caprad]

> Within the Android space they are exemplary

You will often see this with someone coming into a new space. HTC used to be like this, very consumer friendly, then when they start to do well they change and become assholes.

[Pxtl]

Yup. Whoever is in charge of the Xperia platform needs to start making notebooks.

[lucian1900]

They're not that bad with Playstations either. Especially recently, much of it is based on open source code recently (FreeBSD, GCC, curl, Mono, etc.) and publishing is pretty easy.

[johnward]

I was thinking about getting am HTC One to replace my nexus 4 since my contract is up. one thing I was worried about was updates. so this helped me decided not to make the switch.

[malnourish]

Can't get the Nexus 5?