Well, it costs Samsung money to release these updates. How long should they push OS version changes out? 1 year. 2 years. 3 years? You only paid for the phone to work as is. OS version updates are really important its best to get a Nexus device. I have a Note 3 and I have no right to expect that they're going to update to 4.4 or whatever else Google releases in the year.
I'm sorry, but that may very well be the biggest bunch of hokum I've ever read around here. You've playing right into the whole planned obsolescence manipulation by hardware (and even software) makers. I don't know your age, but I'll bet you're young; and that's the problem with being young: The young weren't around when certain stuff happened, and so they don't know why it did.
Any business school grad will attest that corporations needs a certain rate of growth every year just to survive; then a bit more to actually be profitable. When any new market is not-yet-fully-penetrated, device makers can meet grown expectations even selling devices that last a long time because everyone's adopting them... buying them. However, once the market is penetrated, and everyone has one of whatever is the device, then there are no new adopters, and so you the device makers have to figure out a way to make people buy...
...and with high-tech devices, that way has always been to convince the public that devices are stale, and out-of-vogue, and need to be replace
far more frequently than they really need to be. The trend, now, is to make phones seem old and long-in-the-tooth before the two-year contract with the carrier has even expired; that's part of the reason why AT&T prices things so that the phone's manufacturer's suggested retail price is fully paid (between what the customer paid in cash for it at the beginning, and then whatever portion of the monthly service fees are allocated to hardware debt retirement) by around the 18th month, give or take, of the 24 month contract. AT&T's whole paradigm, in fact, is to upgrade the user to a whole
new phone and 24-month contract sometime between the 18th and 24th month of the
old 24-month contract!
Because of that, both phone makers and carriers pretty much abandon support for devices before most users' two year contracts are up; and if the phone is already last year's model by the time the customer signs it to a new two-year contract, then it's entirely possible that NO updates will occur during the life of said contract; and, worse, some app makers will begin dropping support for its OS level. That, in my opinion, is criminal; and I'd like to (only figuratively, of course) drag the AT&T and Samsung execs who colluded to create such a manipulative and keep-the-customer-paying paradigm behind a '72 Dodge pickup!
The standards and expectations were long ago set by Windows, iOS and even Linux. At dead minimum, the device should be updated for two (2) years after the very last
new one was sold by a carrier on a two-year contract... and that's just at
minimum. Personally, I think all devices should be supported with updates and patches and whatnot for at least one year longer than that, even... for a total, then, of three years after the very last
new one was signed onto a two-year contract.
Of course, if phone makers had the same sensibilities as PC makers, then support for a given OS version would go on for about a decade... and that's actually as it should be.
So, please don't sing to us the manufacturer's manipulative tune, here. There's no reason in the world why phones couldn't last easily three to five years for most users.
That said, because phones tend to have the dead minimum amount of hardware needed to support the collective body of typical apps out there, it's very easy for apps to exceed the capabilities of a phone; for the phone to begin to slow-down and not well handle its apps because as the phone has been aging, the apps installed on it, and updated however often, have been getting bigger and requiring faster processors and more RAM in order to operate as quickly and efficiently as they first did; and that, of course, is because app makers keep making their apps to run on the latest and greatest hardware...
...which is, in effect, yet more of the keep-the-customer-paying paradigm. The app makers just play right into it, just like you're doing, here.
And the end-user pays the price -- literally -- for all that put-money-into-the-pockets-of-corporations, planned/contrived obsolescence lunacy.
If GE, Whirlpool and other kitchen appliance makers had adopted such a paradigm, everyone would be replacing their refrigerators every couple of years instead of every 10 or 20 or even 30 years. If the makers of roofing shingles adopted such a paradigm, our houses would need a new roof every five or so years instead of every 35 or so years. Is that really the kind of world in which you want to live?
Stop being a lemming. Don't run-off the carriers' and device makers' cliff just because they've set things up that way. Demand more of them. Let them know that they need to build the quality into the device to make it last for a
MINIMUM of three years (even up to five, truth be known); and that it needs to be
SUPPORTED WITH UPDATES for the duration of it!
Desktop, notebook, netbook, laptop and tablet computers, too.
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