Dear Sir or Madam,
We Galaxy S users would first like to take this opportunity to thank you for your commitment to excellence in your products and software. It is this type of forward thinking that will propel you further into the realm as truly one of the giants of the mobile telecommunications front-runners. It is in this assurance of merit that we ask for your time and consideration.
Recently many internet news agencies, blogs, forums,…have claimed that Samsung is reevaluating its stance on supplying Galaxy S phones with an update to the newest Android operating system platform, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS-4.0). It is with great interest that we are monitoring this development and our intention to be on that update list.
With that being said, please allow us to give some background information as occurring over the past several months. Our main carrier for the Vibrant is T-Mobile. The Vibrant (Galaxy S) was at its release considered one of the flagship devices for both Samsung and T-Mobile. As such, many of these devices were sold to customers who in order to afford the device were required to sign a subsidized 2-year contract with T-Mobile. The Vibrant was released with the Android o/s 2.1 (Éclair) and was catapulted into the top ranks of the smartphone technology. Since then, the Vibrant has fallen into the mediocre category as technology has driven faster and further than many have expected. While the specifications of the Vibrant are comparable to that of Google’s Nexus S handset, it had not been scheduled for an upgrade at all. Only through perseverance did it receive the Froyo (2.2) o/s, only to be provided news accounts that the Gingerbread (2.3) o/s would not be delivered to our handset. Needless to say, we were happy with our upgrade; however the fact that without an upgrade to Gingerbread (which our handset supposedly has the optimization needed), we the end-users were, to our dismay, essentially stranded at that point.
As we all know, the Android operating system is open source, meaning that the kernel developed for Android falls under a General Public License (G.P.L.) which allows many developers to create their own custom ROMs, freely and openly. This very business savvy approach is one of the things that many end-users absolutely love about Android. It is also why the Android smartphone is one of the fastest developing, most customizable and highly regarded devices in recent history. Recently the CyanogenMod team has dropped its support for our device due to a potentially dangerous development regarding the 911/e911 issues in the code for the device. (see articles at
CNET,
Engadget and
PCWorld) Being open source does not mean the proprietary files are to be divulged. And we understand that. One of the reasons that CyanogenMod team decided to drop support for the Vibrant is because it could not get the source from Samsung directly to alleviate the 911/e911 issue and in good conscience they decided that they could not endorse a product that had potentially fatal implications. We applaud them however we are a bit unnerved as well because we were dropped, yet again.
A custom ROM is not what we are looking for with this petition. What we are looking for is your consideration and hopefully favorable decision to provide the many Galaxy S users with a reliable, safe, state-of-the-art device that will rival any of its competitors. Since many of us are still locked into the subsidized contracts, simply purchasing a new handset is not an option for many of us.
We thank you for your time, patience and exceedingly high quality of product, support and technology.