Absolutely. And this is IMHO because to them the phone is an appliance and a disposable one at that. so long as the cost is reasonable to them, they won’t complain. However if the cell phone vendors get too greedy, they will simply vote with their wallets.

That MS is very small in the market at the moment most hardware makers are allowing Windows phone 7 devices to go out without signature locked boot loaders. Yes they do have signature locked boot loaders then can use there are some Windows phone 7 devices that cannot be upgraded as well.

This is the problem everything you are complaining about that you cannot upgrade android is what hardware makers truly want to sell more devices. OS suffering from I am locked has changed over the years. Android is just the latest form.

90 percent of buyers don’t fight for devices that have unlocked boot loaders that they can upgrade for sure. Also they don’t fight for a simple to simply upgrade firmware from PC either.

Complain all you want this has been true for over 15 years.

My friends have worst. Even if they are young, they have other interests, like medicine, laws or videogames, so they won’t want to root their devices, and also they don’t want to broke the warranty of their phones. They can configure Facebook better than me but they aren´t geeks, they just want a phone that works and that they doesn´t have to worry about “viruses”.

Another example, my Sister´s phone come with Android 2.1, unable to transfer applications to USB. Is an Motorola Spice, witch never have an update since its release. Worse that, it can´t be rooted by the usual ways and there isn´t any Mod that can use to upgrade it. So my sister has an insecure and useless phone that can only have few apps installed.

iPhones and Windows Phones can be updated without depend of the hardware, because every phone with those OSes has the same stack of the OS, witch makes them easily to update.

this is pure bushwah Pog. What does the fact that some geeks can root their phones have to do with general support or utility. That is not reality, nor is it viable as a business policy.

The vast majority of potential smart phone users are not going to care about such geek nonsense. A phone is an appliance to be used, period.

Here’s a quotation from HTC’s warrany:
“This Limited Warranty applies only to the hardware components of the Product as originally supplied and does not apply to any software or other equipment.

THIS LIMITED WARRANTY SHALL NOT APPLY IF THE DEFECT WAS
CAUSED THROUGH ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:…
c) use other than in accordance with the user manual, …
“

see http://dl4.htc.com/Web_materials/Manual/Warranty/Android/1015_A_WarrantyCard_76x126.pdf

So, they seem to care mostly about the hardware and not the software. Young people certainly are not interested in a warranty that requires return to the manufacturer. Being without a smart phone for weeks is not an acceptable warranty. They will just buy another. I know several young people who own several as a result of buying the latest thing. They only need to transfer mobility service to the new device and they are back on the air in hours.

Those fair trading laws apply to mobile phones as well. There are models in the USA that are carrier only. Those fair trading laws enforce end user being able to buy the phones at the same kind of money has the phone network providers as well.

There are a few phones you can buy unlocked in Australia for the 100 to 200 dollar mark that if you attempt to buy in the usa unlocked will be in the 400 to 600. Basically your pricing is screwed up. There is no legal prevention against this kind of market distortion in the USA.

We can buy small screen android devices here for under 100 dollars out right. No contract no plan no lockin.

One of the effects of Australian fair trading laws is that apple and others cannot make exclusive deals to provide only X phone either. So yes anyone in Australia can buy a unlocked iphone also any carrier can decide to provide iphones bundled and locked to there service. Yes this is out of apple hands in fact. There is a joint legal agreement between all carriers to lock phones from connecting to a different carrier until contract that is paying for phone is up. So yes you see some phone boxed up on a plan at a carrier you should be able to buy exactly the same model phone to use with anyone just not bundled. This is Australian fair trading requirement. Yes you know exactly how much of your plan is paying for the phone.

Yes USA people really should be jumping up and down about the exclusive deals that are allowed between carriers and hardware makers over there. It is price distorting. Australia carriers are competing more on quality of service and service features than the phone you can get. What is the way it should be.

USA has a problem that USA people need to start seeing. Same issue as USA banks lack of regulation so allowing invalid competition.

Contrarian you hear about people complaining about android phones they cannot upgrade. Simple fact this is exactly what you risk once OS maker and Hardware maker are too close to each other.

Reason what is the simplest way to sell new hardware make the old hardware non functional by forbidding software updates.

I wonder if you see the inevitable result of focusing on the security aspect of the OS, #pogson. Right now, people do not have the sort of problems that you suggest and almost everyone gets satisfactory beneficial usage from their Windows PCs. But what if they did not and became convinced that security was the paramount issue today?

I think that the OS makers and the hardware makers might very well collude together to ensure that only trusted, signed software were allowed to run on new machines. That would be the way to solve the problem, eh? Possibly the idea could extend to web access where trusted browsers would only attach to trusted “clouds” where everyone providing content was known and had obtained an accepted certification. Malware would quickly be a thing of the past, just like bias ply tires.

The same idea could extend to registering firearms and controlling ammunition sales, I think. Who knows where it would end.

I suspect that is just another slice of the baloney that you invent regularly, #oiaohm, but it only shows that you miss the point as usual. You can buy almost any phone in the US “outright” as well, but they are much more expensive than $100. Prices are in the ballpark with common laptops. That fact does not provide any support for #pogson’s notion that people will flock to smart phones as an alternate to a Wintel computer due to price.

Oh Gee Pog, Imagine that. I a user who just wants to use the bloody phone can now become my own sysadmin on my phone no less! Of course I’ve now voided any warranty and support that I have, but what the hell we all “Know” that those support contracts arent worth anything anyway….

Do you actually read what you write Pog?

So what!