I've never seen a cell phone manufacturer put out a bulletin about security flaws. They put out updates that fix the flaws, along with a URL with details on what was fixed.
Of course. I've never been part of a project with a schedule like this though. My group once took a 6 month dev cycle to add a very long list of features to a 4 million line code base. That list of features were broken into 3 categories: Must have; Should have; and Gee that would be nice.
We removed almost 200,000 lines of obsolete code, added around 160,000 lines of new code, and touched / modified around 400,000 lines of code. We completed both the "Must" and "Should" lists of features, and implemented nearly 80% of the "Gee that would be nice" list. All done by the focus date, which was 2 weeks earlier than the commit date.
Our QA cycle finished on time with every single metric at least 30% better than that required for release. Since they had an additional 2 weeks to work, confidence on this release was higher than most.
So yeah, things can change. When they're well planned and committed to, and the team behind every phase of the project is competent, they usually change for the better.
Now, I think I'm remembering all those numbers right, but this was 8 years ago. Since then our company has become considerably deeper in it's management structure, and not a single release cycle has gone quite so smooth or been quite so effective, but we make our deadlines. Every time. It's not easy, and the stuff we deal with is exceedingly complex. But we do make commitments on our dev cycles, and we keep them. When a security issue is discovered, we build a patch and put it out for customers that need it. Any time a customer asks for an issue (regardless of whether it's security related) to be fixed for a supported version (2 years from release date, not 1), they usually get it within a week, and that's if we haven't already built the patch for that issue.
It seems like you're arguing that they don't have to meet a deadline because they never gave or committed to one. I'm arguing that with security issues, that's irrelevant. If our customers were made to wait 3 months for security fixes they had any reasonable expectation of getting, heads would roll. I can promise you that.
And as for having a plan against them, ALL our products have the same plan against them. If there's an issue, we fix it, regardless of what build of our product you have. We have made a number of small-release builds that made up a very small part of our install base, and we've never treated them like third-class citizens in our customer base.
Is price not important? Funny, I always thought it was. I would actually like to understand why it's not relevant. Personally, I would have a very different set of expectations from something I paid $250 for than for something I paid $750 for, wouldn't you? Keep in mind, the price paid for this phone is more than a week's pay for many of the people that own it. I don't set my expectations of anything I buy in complete absence of price consideration.That's how we all wound up here
Unfortunately, we all already bought the phone, and our requests for updates, information, and pretty much anything resembling a schedule has been met with deflection, misleading promises, and vague statements that given their track record, we can only assume mean what any normal person would think they mean.
Just to be clear, my first unlocked phone was the Galaxy Nexus. I eventually wound up with an S5, though that wasn't unlocked. The contrast between the two cemented my preference for unlocked devices - because the unlocked one was getting updates much more regularly than the locked one. Just as an aside, both devices were on the Verizon network. I remember the Verizon forums going nuts because everyone else with the S5 had the latest security fixes and OS updates months before Verizon customers. Another case where paying top dollar didn't get you top tier service - especially not now that T-Mo and Sprint have built out their networks. So I did as you are recommending here, and I spoke with my wallet. I moved to another carrier (www.ting.com). My service is every bit as good as it was with Verizon (better when I'm at my desk at work) and I'm saving more than $100 every month.
This whole update problem has shown me one thing: I was attributing the excellent experience I had with the GNexus jointly to Google and Samsung, and the annoyance I had with the S5 primarily to Verizon. That wasn't right. Samsung makes great hardware, but their software game is still crap. Verizon has recently shown it can light a fire under it's process too. So I'm going to keep on griping until either they get their $#!t together, or I move on to another phone. I've had this one 9 months now, and I usually get almost 2 years out of them. I think that's plenty of time for them to get their feet under them. And next time yes, I'm going to buy a Google phone (never cared for Blackberry). Maybe if Samsung get their act together between now and then, I'll bother watching them over the next couple years and consider them again.
Thing is, I can quietly just decide to take my money elsewhere next time, and hope Samsung gets it (which they wont), or I can make sure my reasons for doing so are plastered wherever it's appropriate, so my opinion has more of an impact, and Samsung is far more likely to understand why I'm taking my money elsewhere.
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