Tom S.
Well-known member
First of all, AT&T is not a communication company. It sells us products that allow US to communicate, but AT&T itself is not in the business of communicating anything other than ads and press releases.
None of the carriers tell us when to expect updates, except in general terms.
So Sprint and T-Mobile got their updates out faster. Could that be because they only have about one third of the models that AT&T and Verizon have...meaning they have fewer phones to push updates for?
Maybe we're getting 4.1.2. Maybe they're trying to solve the battery plummet issue. Maybe they have a ton of employees taking vacation to be with their families. Maybe the person in charge of this update is dealing with an illness or family crisis.
And I think it's pretty obvious why they don't let us know when to expect updates. They likely don't know how long it will take. And if they announce a date and then encounter a problem that pushes the release a couple weeks, then they have a bunch of impatient loudmouths screaming their heads off, saying "you promised it would be out two weeks ago...you suck." At that point, they have to announce reasons for the delay, which costs money and still won't quiet the masses. It's better for them to just keep their mouths shut and go about their business.
Businesses like AT&T can't afford to release a bad update. Bad press. Returned phones. Call centers blowing up with calls. A bad update would cost the company millions. To avoid those unnecessary expenses, they have quality processes in place: procedures, checklists, integration & testing. They have a cycle of testing, debugging, fixing, deploying, and testing again. Every glitch they find starts the cycle over again. It takes a LOT of time to do this.
And once you realize that AT&T has probably two to three times the number of phones to update that Sprint or T-Mobile do, it's not surprising that we're still waiting.
If you think it's so easy to develop and push a working update, I invite you to download the Android code from Google and create your own ROM. All the tools are there for you.
Sent from my Pebble Blue SGS III.
Good post. AT&T doesn't have the legion of followers like Apple and can't afford an Apple Maps debacle. They actually test their software releases, unlike some of their competition.