Microsoft quite often does provide a free upgrade to the next version of Windows if you purchase your computer within about six months of the release date of the new version. I think if you were to apply this policy to smartphones, especially Android, you would probably fall within this window most of the time.
I don't think Android manufacturers can really win with this. Apple never really updates their older devices to the 'full' latest version of iOS. Currently, the iPhone 4S is the only phone with 'full' iOS 5. But people don't see it like this because they get an update that says it is iOS 5.
But the updates to older phones like this received in the Android world would most of the time been provided either by updates to apps or the manufacturers custom skin (TouchWiz, Sense, etc.) - but nobody will accept these as updates in the same vein as an iOS 4 -> iOS 5 update on an old iPhone.
Perhaps if Apple stopped passing off minor tweaks as full new versions of iOS on older devices there wouldn't be as much expectation for other platforms to update.
It's a hard one to answer - if you apply the desktop OS policies to smartphones then the answer is 'not they shouldn't obliged to update', however, people don't normally purchase their PCs on a 24 month contract so can you really adopt that policy?
Last edited by Wilt; 5th January 2012 at 02:31 PM.
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