Would your feeling be the same for all US carriers?
Quite possibly. The reason for this is the seeming cartel operated by the various North American carriers who all insist on their own minority branded variants of the Samsung Galaxy S4. Unlike almost every other country,
with the notable exception of the Communist China mainland, where there are unbranded handsets available and customers are able to pick and choose their carrier and receive unbranded carrier updates directly from Samsung, without the need to go through any lengthy carrier alterations, this means that there is little incentive for those carriers to load on tons of their own apps and re-configure their firmware as they are competing against unbranded phones. However, there is every incentive for those carriers to make sure that their branded firmware keeps apace with Samsung's unbranded releases usually with some having as many as 7 - 10 updates so far since launching, as can be seen from the examples in
#1.2 and
#1.3 of post
#1 of
KitKat 4.4.2 "bugfix" updates rolling out.
Below are the known
bugfix updates since launch, which are above and beyond the normal platform updates from 4.2. -> 4.3 -> 4.4.2.
AT&T SGH-i337... 1, possibly 2. Original 4.3 release withdrawn. AT&T firmware is not available from Samsung sources.
Verizon SCH-i545... 1 possibly. Original 4.3 release withdrawn.
Cricket SCH-R970C.. 1
C-Spire SCH-R970X... 1*
T-Mobile/Metro U.S.A. SGH-M919... 2
US Cellular SCH-R970... 3*
Sprint SPH-L720... 3
* Denotes that a 4.4.2 bugfix update has been issued for that model. All the Canadian variants that I managed to check, have also received a recent KitKat, 4.4.2, bugfix update.
Make no mistake, this is NOT Android or Samsung's fault, as we can see that KitKat bugfix updates are readily available and are distributed. The problem lies with the carriers themselves who do not spend the time, effort and money to update their minority variants. This is never more true than with AT&T and Verizon who even release, or not, as the case may be, their own, heavily modified, firmware directly to their customers without even involving Samsung.
The bottom line is that if you own a U.S. carrier branded model you are less likely to receive a bugfix update and are therefore, more likely to be unhappy with your phone... as demonstrated in this forum where less than 3% of all the Galaxy S4 firmwares worldwide, receive well over 50% of the complaints on here.
Taken from
#1.6 of
KitKat 4.4.2 release... fact and fiction
6. So, next time you see a post that states something like... "KitKat ruined my phone!", or, "KitKat is rubbish", or, "Android sucks", look more closely, do they mean Android's version of KitKat or Samsung's version of Android's KitKat or their carrier's version of Samsung's version of Android's KitKat?
E&OE
