Samsung is the biggest phone maker on the planet. But it is also one of the worst offenders when it comes to looking after/updating its handsets to the latest build of Android.
Case in point: in the US, the Galaxy S7 EDGE (unlocked) is only just starting to get Android 7.0 Nougat. This is a flagship handset we’re talking about here, a phone that costs a lot of money, but, for whatever reason, has only JUST been updated to the latest build of Android.
Android Nougat is almost a year old as well. That’s right: it’s taken Samsung almost 12 months to update its outgoing flagship to the latest build of Android. And that, my friends, is really not good enough.
If you’re paying top dollar for a phone, you expect a certain level of support. This is largely why so many people defect to Apple every year and stay there; Apple has stores, Apple has excellent customer care and the net result of this is market-leading customer retention.
Does Samsung not realise this? Sure, making good-looking, powerful phones is great and no one does this quite as well as Samsung. But it is just one aspect to the business of making and selling phones.
The other aspect is actually taking care of the people you call customers, keeping their handsets up to date with the latest software possible. This is not a big ask, either. The latest builds of Android bring much needed performance boosts, optimisations and security fixes.
It’s not just a case of running the latest software, often times the latest build of Android addresses deep-seated issues with previous, older builds. And Samsung taking its sweet time bringing these much needed features to its phones is simply not good enough.
Whenever people ask me about this, I simply tell them that Samsung is in the business of making profits and this means selling new stuff ALL THE TIME. It makes nothing from software, really, as Google controls that, so Samsung, like so many other Android phone brands, is solely focused on shifting large volumes of hardware.
It wants you to buy the new phone rather than waiting around for your current phone to receive a software update. And if you’re running a much-older handset, well, you’re in for plenty of nasty surprises, as this Reddit user recently found out.
This is basically the nature of the Android space: to make money you have to shift hardware; software is ALWAYS a secondary concern, even more so when you’re talking about older handsets already in circulation.
This is why I have always used Nexus phones and, why in 2017, I switched to Google’s Pixel phones. I still miss the Nexus phones though as Google’s Pixel phones are stupidly overpriced. Finger’s crossed this “issue” is addressed with the Google Pixel 2 range in 2017.
You can still pick up the awesome Nexus 6P as well and if you’re in the market for a solid handset that’ll get updates before the Galaxy S8 does then you should be seriously looking at this phone. Or a Pixel if you can afford one.
Either way, if you go the Samsung/LG/HTC/OnePlus/Sony route, do not expect timely Android updates. It just won’t happen. All the money – and therefore investment – is dedicated to developing and marketing new hardware in order to ensure growing revenues and profits.
