I would hold off a bit longer. It's going to have a 4" screen and should be a much nicer phone than the 4S.

And I'm not sure they're going to launch in October again. I think there's a good possibility it will launch in September. That's only three months away.

Hmm... I'll be starting college in August. But I suppose I could use my dumb phone for a little longer. I hope it will be worth it.

I'm in the same boat. I think I'm available for an upgrade today (if not today, soon) and now I'm just waiting to see what the new iPhone looks like...

Double post.

lol yay because they have ONE phone a year. Android has multiple phones a month. Big difference.

Personally, I think its all ok. I get the freedom of choice and that trumps the very minor issue of not having the latest and greatest OS. My wife has Gingerbread and I have Ice Cream Sandwich. She doesn't even care or know as do the millions of other Android users who are not like us and read tech blogs and shit.

So, because manufacturers flood the market with Android phones, they're allowed to not support a device? That doesn't make sense. If I go buy an iPhone, I'm spending $100-200. If I go buy an Android phone worth using, I'm spending $100-200. For that kind of money (and the $1800 I'll spend during the contract), I expect support for that device. I don't care if other people know about OS updates, I know about them. And the new OS has new features I probably want. If my phone is less than a year old, I expect it to get those updates. It's not an unreasonable request; shit, it's a perfectly rational request.

Basically, you're arguing that customer ignorance validates shitty device support. That doesn't make sense at all.

No, I'm arguing that if your phone works fine, then it really doesn't matter if it gets supported for four years.

I'm arguing that its more important to have choice or real selection.

With iPhone you get ... an iPhone for $200. That's it.

With Android you have more than 10 difference designs and hardware specs and above all prices from free to whatever. That is king and that blows away any detriment you see from not getting Android 9.1 on release day.

Unless the iPhone has the specs you want from the phone. I'm not bashing Android's option set, it's what sets it apart from Apple. It's why I went Android over a year ago.

But that still doesn't excuse manufacturers for being lazy and not supporting their own hardware for even one year. Just because Android has a lot of different options doesn't mean manufacturers get a pass on customer support. Google could easily force manufacturers to support their hardware for a certain amount of time (or, better yet, start handling updates themselves). Bingo, problem solved.

Microsoft has done it for years with Windows. There's no reason Google can't do the same with Android. They don't even have to give all the features to every phone... They could maintain a tiered OS system like Apple does based on hardware capabilities (for example, the iPhone 4 doesn't have dual mics so it doesn't get Siri but the phone still receives the bulk of the iOS6 updates). There are plenty of workarounds to the problem, Google just doesn't want to do it or force manufacturers to support their own hardware. As an end-user, that's a shitty policy no matter how you look at it.

They are with Android 4 ICS and beyond. I don't remember the exact time, I think it is they have a couple months to get the update out and it must be supported for two years or something like that. However, that's the big changes with ICS. That's why OEMs flavors of ICS are massively toned down from previous versions. That's why they are not allowed to change the menu system, etc.

That is excellent news. I'm glad Google is at least making attempts to fix the problem.