There was a time when you’d buy a phone and the software that it came with was the software that you’d have to contend with until you decided to give it away, sell it, or chuck it in the trash. And I’m not just talking about feature phones — the earliest days of Android were like this.
However, as OTA updates have become normalized, there’s been an unintended consequence that comes with the power of modifying software after a phone’s release. It allows manufacturers to launch phone’s which are, for lack of a better word, unfinished.
Look, Software Updates Are Great And There’s A Lot Of Good That They Bring To The Table
Software updates are fantastic and these days, they’re a major part of the criteria that buyers use to select a phone. You have major OS updates, which bring all the magic of new Android versions, and then there are security updates which are smaller and can patch bugs and vulnerabilities as well as add minor fixes and new features.
Imagine using a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, as expensive as it is, and using the exact same set of features for as many as four or five years? In this modern age, nobody would want that, so it is great that we’ve gotten to a point where software updates are so common place.
That’s the good side of software updates and I don’t think there’s anyone that hates that side of the business. But let’s talk about the bad side of OTA updates.
Being Able To Tweak A Phone’s Software After The Fact Has Made Manufacturers Lazy
Manufacturers have not always had the luxury of letting consumers install updates themselves from anywhere in the world. In an earlier time, you would have had to walk into a store and had specialized software install the software for you. That’s not very convenient, but it was the only real way to fix major bugs in released devices. That’s why it was a rare happening for older devices to come with buggy or half-baked software.
These days though, it’s a relatively common occurrence for early buyers of new smartphones to have to deal with a bunch of different issues. It could be a buggy fingerprint reader, a tint on the display, or flagship cameras that don’t perform the way that we expect them to.
For instance, the Samsung Galaxy S24 series came out at the beginning of the year, yet users are still waiting for camera updates to make their cameras perform the way that they’re expected to. In another time, those cameras would have come out of the box completely polished and ready to compete.
Besides Samsung, Google’s Pixel phones are another major culprit, and with nearly every generation. A lot of the time, major features that Google likes to advertise to consumers don’t come working properly out of the box. For instance, with the Pixel 5, some regions had to wait for a 5G update. When the Pixel 4 came out, the Soli Radar was unreliable out of the box. There were also major battery complaints with the Pixel 7. The list goes on.
Don’t Expect This To End Though; Manufacturers Are Cozy With The Current Arrangements
I’m fighting an uphill battle in the hopes that smartphone makers will put more effort into how their devices release. After all, making sure that software is perfect before launch would sometimes involve delays which would completely throw off financial projections for the year, and we know how important the moolah is to these brands.
However, can we at least get to a point where manufacturers put a lot more effort into how their devices will hold up at launch? At least one Pixel release without news articles on some screen, battery, or fingerprint-related issue. That’s all I ask.
