How is the development on this phone? Opinions please!

[etnpnys]

My contract is almost up for renewal. I have a Nexus S 4G right now and I want to stick with vanilla JellyBean and fast future updates. But if the LG Nexus has a bad camera or only 8GB internal storage, there's no way I'm getting it and I'll probably end up getting an S3. (My wife has the S3 and it's crazy nice, but I want vanilla Android).

So, my question to those of you who are already involved here is: how well is the development for this phone? My concerns are in the following areas:

• Samsung takes forever to release official updates to their phones
• Samsung's unwillingness to play nicely with the dev community and their Exynos chip (I know that our S3 has a different CPU - this concern is about company philosophy)
• Are there any tricky drivers (like front camera) that we need to solely rely on Samsung for?
• This one was more of a concern before the LG Nexus was rumored to have an Snapdragon S4 chip: is Samsung using a chip that will possibly run out of favor with Google?

That last question is a bit tricky, because I understand that there's no way to forecast Google's opinion. But when ICS and JB were starting to really take off, they basically came out and said that there are a LOT of phones using a certain CPU that just won't be able to cut it with the new features of the OS. My EVO 4G was one of those phones. This may not be an issue, however, because I understand that the Sprint GS3 is using an Snapdragon S4 chip that is basically a dual-core version of the quad-core chip that will be in the LG Nexus.

Basically, if I get the S3 I'm going to be relying on the developer community for updates and I would like to know what I'm getting in to before I take the plunge. Thanx in advance for any commentary you can provide on the topic.

 

[Skunkape60]

My contract is almost up for renewal. I have a Nexus S 4G right now and I want to stick with vanilla JellyBean and fast future updates. But if the LG Nexus has a bad camera or only 8GB internal storage, there's no way I'm getting it and I'll probably end up getting an S3. (My wife has the S3 and it's crazy nice, but I want vanilla Android).

So, my question to those of you who are already involved here is: how well is the development for this phone? My concerns are in the following areas:

• Samsung takes forever to release official updates to their phones
• Samsung's unwillingness to play nicely with the dev community and their Exynos chip (I know that our S3 has a different CPU - this concern is about company philosophy)
• Are there any tricky drivers (like front camera) that we need to solely rely on Samsung for?
• This one was more of a concern before the LG Nexus was rumored to have an Snapdragon S4 chip: is Samsung using a chip that will possibly run out of favor with Google?

That last question is a bit tricky, because I understand that there's no way to forecast Google's opinion. But when ICS and JB were starting to really take off, they basically came out and said that there are a LOT of phones using a certain CPU that just won't be able to cut it with the new features of the OS. My EVO 4G was one of those phones. This may not be an issue, however, because I understand that the Sprint GS3 is using an Snapdragon S4 chip that is basically a dual-core version of the quad-core chip that will be in the LG Nexus.

Basically, if I get the S3 I'm going to be relying on the developer community for updates and I would like to know what I'm getting in to before I take the plunge. Thanx in advance for any commentary you can provide on the topic.

The development on this phone has been very good. There is already AOSP on this phone along with cyanogen mod 9 and 10. There are no issues at all with Samsung and the developers as far as drivers and updates.

Nothing weird at all with drivers.

The only development that is lagging a bit is the kernels (for the Sprint version). Not that they're difficult but the sprint version is just lagging behind because the kernel devs seen to be with the other carriers. It is looking up though as we are seeing some devs com over.

ROM development is top notch.

I made the switch from the nexus s4g and am happy I did.

 

[Jaimeg123prmt]

Development is pretty good for this phone, especially for Sprint. Overall, though you will be happy with development for any of the carriers.

 

[EndlessDissent]

The only development that is lagging a bit is the kernels (for the Sprint version). Not that they're difficult but the sprint version is just lagging behind because the kernel devs seen to be with the other carriers. It is looking up though as we are seeing some devs com over.

This. The good thing about all carriers using 99%-identical hardware is that the only thing needed to make one carrier's kernels work for our phone is to compile it with the proper flags. No major code changes should be needed, so like Skunkape says, a bunch of the other carriers' devs are now compiling Sprint versions of their kernels. Things are looking up there.

The only problem with a non-TW ROM is that they can't properly handle a 3G/4G handoff, so when you switch towers, you completely lose your data connection, sometimes for a couple minutes. If you don't yet have LTE in your area, this isn't a problem right now. The only thing stopping it from getting fixed is that the people who can fix it don't have access to LTE for testing.