Sony smartphones won't get Jelly Bean until next year

We may see Key Lime Pie before Sony gets even a taste of Jelly Bean.

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[mrsilver]

Admittedly, smartphone software upgrades are not the easiest thing to promise to customers, given the convoluted path they have to travel past carriers.

Speaking as someone who used to work with two (non-US) carriers on ranging mobile phones, I promise you that if a software update is not available from any carrier in any part of the world, then the lack of update is not the fault of the carriers.

One day in the future (if I ever get angry enough) I'll tell you about the first hand experience I have of the things that OEMs often attempt to demand from carriers in exchange for providing a software update for a device.

 

[mrsilver]

Google really needs to fix this. I would think through standards and modularization.

But the problem isn't Google or Android. It's the carriers. How is it that a very small team (sometimes even just one person) can provide updated Android ROMs for 30 phone models, but carriers can't push updates? There are several reasons of course, but the primary one is that they so heavily modify Android before it goes on the phone. They decide what media players it will have, what skin it will have, what ads and apps will be pre-installed, on top of the minor phone specific hardware tweaks, for EACH line of phone.

Until carriers get out of the way and stop putting their own makeup on the OS, we'll never see reasonable upgrade availability.

Not quite. The problem is that OEMs do such a heavy customisation on Android that they have a significant amount of work to do to update to the new version of Android and then layer on top all their modifications. All of this work is perceived as a money sink because they cannot get anyone to pay for it - even though they try it with the carriers all the time.

Carriers often cannot push updates because they don't get them downstream from the OEMs. Yes there are times when they have the updates but they don't want to do anything with them (more so in the US than elsewhere) - but the large majority of the time they simply don't get the updates.

I totally agree with you that carriers in the US shouldn't have the power that they do - but outside of the US, those customisations amount to three or four tabs in an excel spreadsheet, some wallpapers and startup images and some APK's for pre-loading. God knows, I've filled in enough of them in my time.

And yet despite all this, the OEMs are still not shipping even their variants of Android which have no carrier modifications (for handsets sold directly to customers). That should give you an idea where the bottleneck is.

 

[mrsilver]

O2-UK have blocked the ICS update for all UK users of all 2011 Xperias (no matter what network you are on, nor whether the device is SIM-free or not -- they can do this because the networks still have to support all devices)..

Sorry but this makes no sense. O2 cannot block people who have the Xperia on other UK networks from upgrading their phone. In addition O2 cannot block people who have bought the Xperia directly from Sony getting an update.

Finally I don't really understand what you mean by "networks still having to support all devices" as that also makes no sense. I can use whatever phone I want on O2 and they are under no obligation to support it.

 

[mrsilver]

It's quite unbelievable, but yes they can.

I'm sorry but the reason you think it's unbelievable is because you're quite a bit wrong in places. I've worked for 2 UK network operators directly with their device accreditation teams so, if you don't mind, I can tell you exactly how it works

Part of the reason why updates take so long for phone manufacturers is that for any firmware to be released on any phone it must first go through a strict and tedious approval process by each network operator in the country of desired release.

Close but not quite. Each handset that comes from a manufacturer will come with, amongst other things, an identifier which is unique to that operator. This identifier allows each network operator to allow or block an update to their devices. The accreditation they do typically takes 3 weeks and, from what I can remember, not one OEM has passed first time (often failing on embarrassingly trivial things) which means they need to bug fix and then re-submit. Once a network operator approves the update, it can be deployed to only those handsets that have their unique operator code. This means that Vodafone can reject a software update but O2 can accept it and different people have different versions.

The reason that this becomes a convoluted project is that phone manufacturers typically drop the phone into the network operators at the same time and then consolidate all the defects reported from them into the next release. Some operators will take that release, some will want another one. This is why updates come out later on phone operators than others.

Due to roaming capabilities, all it takes is for one network operator to disapprove and the firmware will be blocked for the whole country (and on all operators).

This depends completely on the policy of the phone manufacturer and has nothing to do with roaming. Network operators have frequently rejected software updates only to take a later version and it has absolutely no bearing on the handsets rolled out to their competitors nor the open market variant. To this day, if you find four people with the same handset on four different networks, then the chances are quite good that there will be a couple of different firmware versions. This is because some networks have more strict rules on their accreditation process than others.

If Sony has made the decision not to support all UK users based on the decision with O2, then that is Sony's decision and has nothing to do with O2. There is no reason why they cannot launch it to their stock handsets or with the other operators.

However what you sometimes find is that if an operator rejects an update in such a high profile way, then the other operators will inquire to find out why and may often withdraw their approval post accreditation. No testing will catch all the bugs after all.

Regarding roaming, network operators have long accepted that they cannot stop handsets they haven't accredited from connecting to the network (direct purchases and roaming being two examples) which is why they don't block them. If a specific handset starts causing harm to the network then they have capabilities to block it but I have no idea if they've ever used it.

The reason being is because many people will call their network operator if they are having problems with their phone, and not the phone manufacturer itself. Dumb users mean that the network operators have no choice but to provide support for those who use their network, even if they didn't buy the phone through the network operator directly.

Sort of. Firstly bear in mind that if you do call your phone manufacturer you'll be told directly to call your network operator. This is a screwed up situation which has long benefited the phone manufacturers over the operators and, naturally, they are keen for it not to change. The operators would love to hand it back to the phone manufacturers but it wouldn't go down well with customers.

Network operators will provide support for all handsets they range but it's impossible task to support absolutely every single phone. Thankfully the call center scripts they have can support about 80% of the problems as they are generic for most operating systems. So in short, they'll have a good go, but if you're running some obscure ZTE handset than no-one knows about, they'll only be able to help you so far.

I hope that clears things up a little. The TL;DR version is that testing and accreditation of handsets is done by each operators and their decision to release generally has no bearing on the retail firmware or firmware for other operators. Each operator can be running slightly different versions of firmware and that the decision to withhold a release for an entire country if only one operator rejected the update would be down to the phone manufacturer not the operators.

(of course, things are different for the iPhone)

 

[mrsilver]

That is just around three or four excel tabs, some wallpapers and startup images and some APK's for pre-loading TOO MUCH.

Carriers should keep their slimy hands completely off the handsets, do what they are supposed to, and not a single thing more. If I wanted any of their useless crap, I'd install myself.

To be fair, some of the customisation things are required for the phone to operate at its best on the network. Different networks have different hardware and different network configurations but, yes, a lot of it just isn't needed and - in Europe at least - these customisations are getting fewer and fewer.

Last time I looked at an operator branded phone it had a splash screen, two additional bookmarks and a default home page on the browser. All pretty benign and easy to remove/change. Of course, that was in Europe.

Mind you, prior to the iPhone, a large number of OEMs required significant amounts of handholding in order to get a phone launched. Thankfully the rise of iPhone and Android has meant that they aren't quite so clueless these days - but you'd be amazed at the crappy (supposedly final) software builds I used to receive from OEMs who you'd assume would know better.

One example couldn't even dial 999 correctly - which is the UKs emergency services and quite an important number to get right!