The phone has gingerbread 2.3.3 installed and I havent had any real issues with it.
It has firmware that is branded with GLOBUL (which I find is a Bulgarian telco). As I said everything actually works fine - so this isnt really a problem.
At some stage though, the android updates will get tempting and at the moment I am not too keen to try the alternate experimental ROM firmwares.
So...
If I hook my phone up to kies it says
"Your device does not support software upgrading via kies"
and it displays a long string which identifies the software installed.
As far as I understand.
1) If you buy a phone from your telco (say Vodafone who do sell this phone) will only get updates via vodafone if they choose to make them available. The phone has to already have software installed that identifies it as a VF release. The release would be an over the air update from vodafone. <Though the phone also has the facility to try and get updates via wifi.>
2) There are some 'international' android releases that would effectively be a vanilla samsung release. If you have this installed you may be able to pick up updates via Kies(with an attached usb cable). Are these also the releases you may be able to get via wifi?
If you have a parallel imported android phone then you probably cant update it via any normal/supported channels. So short of travelling to Bulgaria (in my case) and buying a local SIM I will have to remain on the firmware currently installed (apart from going down the ODIN/find and flash some other firmware path).
Have I pretty much summed up the situation?
Any obvious and simple work arounds that I have missed?
