Evo 4G and other Sprint phones reach 2.2 soon

Sprint today triggered controversy in confirming that it would have Android 2.2 on its network in the "near future." Details weren't given of which phones would have it, but it validated Adobe's slip that the Evo 4G would be one of those phones. A spokesperson for Sprint explicitly warned, however, that neither the HTC Hero nor the Samsung Moment would get the OS revamp.

No explanation was given by Sprint for the problems, prompting a hostile reaction from users who blamed the carrier itself for allegedly refusing to upgrade phones that are still very young and which they believe should have been capable of a newer Android build.

"This is absolutely ridiculous," one owner told Sprint on its update page. "Phones that are less than a year old will not get the update? I love Android devices, espcially HTC Android devices, but I refuse to drop $200+ a year on new phones, just because you guys don't want to free up the manpower to do the updates."

Some of the cause for the updates is likely to be HTC, which only said 2010 phones would be updated. As such, the only HTC phones on Sprint to carry Android 2.2 are likely to be the Evo 4G and possibly the Legend. Samsung hasn't explained any of its plans for the Moment, but the company has developed a pattern of declining to upgrade phones beyond one revision.

The decisions underscore a mounting problem of version fragmentation for the Android platform as a whole, which in the past year has seen phones that are just several months old locked out of even minor revisions. Hardware requirements have affected some early phones like the G1, but the issue has increasingly become one of phone developers either spending extra time with updates or refusing to invest the effort. Google has shown signs that it's bracing for the problem and not only plans to move more core features to upgradeable apps but may negate the need for custom UIs with improvements to Android 3.0.

The practice contrasts sharply with that of Apple, whose control of both the hardware and OS has let it not only push firmware upgrades as soon as they're ready but to offer them to an older range of hardware. Apple only this month began locking out iOS devices from upgrades as it said the first generations of the iPhone and iPod touch were too slow to handle iOS 4 properly.

By Electronista Staff