There has been a lot of things happening because of the US version of Samsung's Galaxy S. Unlike the international version, they are still running on Android 2.1 Eclairs, with Froyo promised soon. A couple of days back there were some rumors that Samsung is holding back the update to Froyo to increase the value of their Vibrant 4G . Even a class action lawsuit has been filed because of this.

Today, an anonymous person who claims to have inside knowledge of the matter has said that the Froyo update is being held back due to cost. In the contract between the carriers and the manufacturer, updates are broken up into three:

• critical, which is provided by Samsung free of charge
• maintenance, for which the carriers have to pay Samsung a small fee
• feature, which commands a larger fee

While other manufacturers like Motorola and HTC counts the Froyo update as a maintenance update, Samsung charges for the Froyo update as a feature update. The US carriers are not happy with this and they have collectively decided not to pay Samsung for the Froyo update in the hope that this will devalue the Galaxy S and force Samsung to drop the fee.

This situation from this anonymous insider seems a bit more likely than Samsung holding on to the update because of an upcoming phone. However, there is no way to confirm any of this. Which one do you think is more likely?

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