[clug] Acer beTouch E130 (Android 1.6) smartphone

[Michael Still]

On 1/6/11 4:30 PM, Daniel Pittman wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 21:07, Michael Still<mikal at stillhq.com>  wrote:
>> On 1/6/11 3:33 PM, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>>
>>> Vendor updates are rare, but for most phones are the only option.  You
>>> have to turn off the vendor security, typically by running some sort
>>> of exploit to obtain root access.  (A handful of Google devices do
>>> that and void the warranty if you ask nicely with software, most
>>> don't.)
>>
>> I'm not sure what you're talking about here? I count 3 releases in 2010
>> alone. How many do you want?
>
> For which device?  As far as I know the HTC Magic on Three Australia
> has not received a vendor upgrade past 1.6 - they certainly lagged an
> awful lot in shipping updates until there was a root hole found, and
> then they shipped a patch that fixed that, nothing else.  A quick
> check shows at least a few confirming notes.

Yeah, like I said. If you buy phone from a telco, you are waiting on 
Vodafone to approve the push. There are some sensible reasons for that 
-- bandwidth costs for pushing the update, the bump in support calls 
which happen when you change stuff, the possibility of exposing new 
bugs, forcing people to buy new handsets to get the new hotness. I'm not 
saying I agree with those reasons, but there is some form of logic there.

If you don't want to be held to all that, don't buy your phone from a telco.

> Do you mean "Android Releases from Google" in 2010, or are you
> speaking only of the Acer phone?

Operating system releases.

> Ah!  ...or are you talking about having purchased the phone outright
> and entirely unlocked direct from the vendor, rather than through a
> teleco?  In that case you are much more likely to obtain updated
> software, at least for a little while, from the vendor - since you now
> have two parties (Google, and the vendor) rather than the three
> (...and the teleco) that most phones suffer through. :)

Mikal