Samsung has launched a pair of low-end smartphones in South Korea, both of which are running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. While they are styled to look like the larger Galaxy S3, the internals of these 3.5 and 3.27-inch phones read pretty much like the original Galaxy S series with 1 GHz single core CPUs and 512 mb RAM. So in reality these are really shrunk-down Galaxy S devices with smaller, lower res displays.
Until a week ago, my son was using a Galaxy S Fascinate and from mid-December 2011, it was happily running and Android 4-based custom ROM. Clearly Samsung could have upgraded these phones if they wanted to, it was just a business decision to push customers to newer phones.
Samsung announces Galaxy Young and Galaxy Fame | Android Central
Almost identical entry-level Galaxy S3-alikes
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The thing that absolutely infuriated me was that a mere 2-3 months after I got my Vibrant (the T-Mobile Galaxy S), Samsung, who kept promising that the update to Froyo was right around the corner, instead released the Vibrant 4G which was an identical phone with Froyo preinstalled. Never mind that my Nexus One was already running Gingerbread.
But what they should really be ashamed about is that most of the Galaxy S line was never updated OTA past Eclair. Even using Kies I think most of them topped out at Froyo and didn't get to Gingerbread, let alone Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean.
The Verizon Fascinate did eventually get to Gingerbread, but by that time there were already CM9-based ICS ROMs running pretty reliably on the Fascinate so we made the jump.
As soon as my son turned on the phone for the first time in the car on the way home from the store and saw Bing on the home page, he was angry and wanted Google services. As soon as we got home I plugged it in to my computer and within 15 minutes, it was rooted, Bing, Blockbuster and other bloatware were gone and google stuff was where it should be.