The bigger they are the slower they do firmware updates?

[greatwhite]

I'm not sure I buy into either argument completely:

1.

I don't really buy that reason. Everything is about scale - if a small cell phone manufacturer has 5 software developers working on firmware updates, then a bigger company that has 10 x as many phone models out there, should employ 10 x more developers working on firmware updates, and give each developer one or a few models to work on.....rather than work on the entire model range.

I agree: Everything is about scale, but it scale of manufacture of 1 product. Seeing as this topic was about delays in firmware updates, lets use the Galaxy S6 and LG G4 (both latest completed lifecycle products). Some googling suggests the S6 sold 70m units while the G4 about 10m. With 7x the units sold you could fund 7x the dev team cost. Updates should be faster not slower.

2.

More developers is likely to make the product worse, not better. It doesn't scale like that.

So bigger companies make a worse product? Companies don't get big and stay big by doing that. How about with much bigger budget, you can cherry pic the best devs - same size dev team, just all top notch.

 

[surfs-up]

10x more developers is likely to make the product worse, not better. It doesn't scale like that.

That is why I said that each developer gets a limited number of models to work on. What is the difference ?

Leeco has 10 phone models and 5 developers (2 phones per developer)

Samsung has 50 phone models and 25 developers (2 phones per developer)

Provided that developers are not burdened with being responsible for more than their models to work on....I don't see the difference between the above two examples.

 

[Bryn]

Buy an iPhone.

Of all the slow methods out there, I think that's the slowest means of getting the latest version Android.

What you mean to say, is buy a Google Pixel.

 

[cguy]

I'm not sure I buy into either argument completely:

1.
I agree: Everything is about scale, but it scale of manufacture of 1 product. Seeing as this topic was about delays in firmware updates, lets use the Galaxy S6 and LG G4 (both latest completed lifecycle products). Some googling suggests the S6 sold 70m units while the G4 about 10m. With 7x the units sold you could fund 7x the dev team cost. Updates should be faster not slower.

2.
So bigger companies make a worse product? Companies don't get big and stay big by doing that. How about with much bigger budget, you can cherry pic the best devs - same size dev team, just all top notch.

That's an incorrect conclusion to draw from my statement. Rather, there is an optimal number of developers that can work on a particular piece of code, and increasing it beyond that number hurts performance. They will certainly try to cherry pick the best, but they will eventually hit a steady state. They won't make a worse product since they won't hire past the point of decreased efficiency, but this also means that they can't scale their update cycle just by adding more people.

 

[cguy]

That is why I said that each developer gets a limited number of models to work on. What is the difference ?

Leeco has 10 phone models and 5 developers (2 phones per developer)

Samsung has 50 phone models and 25 developers (2 phones per developer)

Provided that developers are not burdened with being responsible for more than their models to work on....I don't see the difference between the above two examples.

The coding effort can't be divided up by model. There is a common code base for all current and future models, with perhaps a few specialized release branches which only ever differ from the main release trunk by only a few hundred lines of code. Every change needs to be considered in the context of how general it is, and will likely have to be propagated to the main tree and therefore be tested across all models. Any issues arising from this testing will have to be resolved before he fix can become general.

Also, the developers specialize in various pieces of the code base, not in models. Very few developers can work across all the firmware, most only know a fraction.

 

[Chevron]

For a company that has the dominant position in the market, this makes no sense.

It happens because they're the dominate player. They don't have to try as hard as people will buy their stuff anyway.

 

[casper76]

Been waiting for so long for Android 7 on my S6 edge. Suppose its our network providers taking so long? Most other countries are getting Android 7 on Sammobile.

 

[Dairyfarmer]

Have a look on needrom. There is an "official" rom dated 6/5/17 with 7.0 and "custom" rom dated 10/2/17 with Lineage OS