Android fragmentation on a new phone

<p>That’s the problem with using other than stock Android (and a primary reason Nexus phones are (were) so popular). When phone makers customize Android with their own UI (as Samsung does) you are at the mercy of the phone maker to provide updated customized versions of Android (which Samsung and most others famously take their time with, if they update it at all).</p>
<p>Ideally, the OS would update independently of any OEM customizations; unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. Of course, if enough Samsung customers cared about this and put pressure on Samsung to provide timely updates (or, at the least, ensure that a new phone out of the box is on the current version), they would probably do so. I guess we can infer that not enough Samsung customers care about this (and it’s obvious that Samsung doesn’t care).</p>
<p>The alternative is to unlock the phone and manually install a ROM that is up-to-date (which, of course, would probably void any Samsung warranty). That’s what I’ve done with my Nexus devices that also no longer get OS updates because they’re "too old." Clearly, that’s not a practical solution for most "normal" phone users (as MJF puts it).</p>