Android updates

Why do cell phone companies need to release their own version of android ?

Why can’t you update android from the official google servers ?

To force you to buy a new one every year

because you have a SHITTON of phone configurations out there, unlike Apple phones which are limited to several models
on top of that, manufacturers add their own branding, apps and interfaces, as pretty much no top-end phones ship with vanilla android
Project Treble is supposed to help with all this mess

Uhm...
inb4 android one / project treble

We can close thread

>because you have a SHITTON of phone configurations out there
Isn't the same true for laptops? Yet still every laptop runs windows out of the box, at most you need some manufacturer-supplied drivers.

so three project fi phones?

#deep

they are all arm and theres not really that many arm chip makers. the biggest difference is the logo on the case.

To get it right for their product, and to add their own shit on top of it. Wish it stopped at optimization rather than forcing products down our throats.
Nah, a lot of companies roll out updates for phones up to 2 years behind. Some further.

windows branding comes down to a few bloatware applications that can be removed within 30 minutes
android branding includes system services, reworked interfaces and other stuff that manufacturers spend time and resources developing, shipping a product with their brand identity, that's why it takes longer to push those

Because there's money in rebranding the phone and filling it with their custom apps.

The idea of android in itself is stupid, as an example take windows microsoft ensures that its os runs on almost every hardware, imagine if dell could tinker with the os and could relase their own version of it, open source is not always a good idea

Windows was built around a standard system architecture originally defined by the IBM PC this is why you can have a decade old laptop PC and still receive the latest windows 10 updates
Android of the other hand it's not really a branding thing they have to go trough it's just there is no standardized way of implementing things so phone OEMs can just do what ever the hell they want and then modify android to work with whatever implementation of hardware they have

>open source is not always a good idea
Just don't buy shitty Androids and it's not a problem.

its actually the closed source parts that make android shit.

This. Only one of many problems with the philosophy of the android platform.

So buy an iPhone. Great updates from Apple servers.

What is AOSP?

>What is AOSP?
Whatever Google says it is. It's not like it's a standard or anything.

Sure, but you can release your own version of android (probably not realistically). Or spin up something other than what was installed by default on your phone. My S3 was stuck on droid 4.3 'there are no updates for this device', I installed lineage yesterday which is droid 7.1 for the build I have and it's improved the phone a lot.

Control.
If they have their own version they can justify a lot of things to users under the guise of serving the user.

every phone will have treble, should be any phone launching with 8+

Why does Google need to release its own version of BSD on Linux?
Why can't you update BSD on Linux from UC Berkeley and Mr. Torvalds?

Why does the aforementioned Mr. Torvalds need to release his own version of Unix?
Why can't you update Unix from--
oh wait