The current situation is somewhat unfair to the indiscrete / non-tech-savvy consumer since they might buy an Android phone without understanding the differences from the iOS ecosystem. At least several of my friends did. "They're about the same right? And this one was $30 cheaper!" And I genuinely feel bad every time this happens.
Note that I of course have no gripes with Android OS/concept itself -- it's a good contender to iOS. My gripe is with the current gouging of consumers by hardware manufacturers/cell phone companies, of the fragmented/poor/outdated hardware coverage in many models, lack of upgrades, et cetera. And don't forget the mandatory "crapware" that carriers pre-install.
This is quite different from buying, say, a Dell/HP PC vs. a Mac -- in both cases do you get a working, upgradeable machine.
It is the same thing that happens in the PC space. Since Microsoft doesn't make hardware they or third parties must write drivers and support everything that people put out there. Where OS X only needs to support the devices that Apple creates.
The difference is that Windows is such an entrenched platform that the third parties are willing to step up to the plate and write the drivers for the PC. Now the question is if Andriod will ever reach that same point.
Android has all the drivers it needs.
The real difference is that Android systems are locked down in ways more annoying to circumvent than your average Windows OEM junkware install. It is easy to uninstall junkware on Windows, and to pop in a CD to upgrade or crossgrade the OS.
I'd imagine he means wiping the Windows install and installing some other OS, e.g. Linux, BSD or OSx86 or something. Not really an upgrade or downgrade of the Windows installation the machine shipped with. I think crossgrade is a nice way to put it ;-)
I'd argue its just as easy/easier to "crossgrade the OS" (whatever that means) on an android phone as a PC. Step 1: get a .zip from http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ Step 2: Place it on your SD card. Step 3: Reboot phone, hold down the power button, select "install update". Now you have an android device with the latest software, no bloatware, and a host of other awesome features.
i've never seen an android device be able to be upgraded that way, and i work on an android rom.
even on the nexus phones which are arguably the most friendly to installing a custom rom, you have to hook the phone up to a computer, install the android sdk for usb drivers and download a fastboot binary, run "fastboot oem unlock", erase all of your phone's data, then install the custom rom and set everything back up.
on nearly every other phone, the process is much more complicated involving hacks to get around a locked bootloader. i remember doing this on my mytouch 3g and the process involved 2 microsd cards, a hex editor, and a strange website where i had to type in some serial number or something from my phone and download a specially crafted binary for it to put on one of the sd cards.
The problem is that you're relying on a third party which does it in their free time. I am not sure they're up to the level of the Linux kernel or Firefox yet.
And installing stuff on a PC is ingrained into people's psyche, if they can't do it themselves, they get some other folks to do it for them. Upgrading phones? Not so much. My friend never updated her iPhone 4 once. She once used iTunes to transfer songs to it when she bought it and then hated iTunes and didn't listen to music on the phone enough to connect it again. I installed a bunch of apps/games on her phone that she uses/plays, but whenever I see the phone, I see updates to the apps that are never installed from the app store. The other day, 34 apps were pending install on the app store icon!
I know that's unfathomable to us geeks, but that is how much of the general populace is. They wouldn't even know what a ROM means or how to go about finding what's the best one from xda-dev or how or even why they should attempt to install it instead of just using something that "works"(well or not) for now.
That's why this entire topic is a tempest in the teapot. Only us geeks and computer enthusiasts care about firmware updates. In real life, I know many people who are satisfied with their Android 1.6, 2.1 and iOS 3.x.
These people, even if they know that upgrade is available won't bother. The existing device with it's current firmware works for them, so why change it.
There are several significant problems with this that do impact regular people as well:
1) Developers must invest more time and money in order to support a wider range of firmware revisions, as the user base is more fractured. This leads to less app selection for users, and more buggy behavior on apps that are available. If you're an iOS developer, you can focus on just the last major firmware revision and reach 95%+ of the market, or support the last two major firmware revisions and reach 99%+ of the market, whereas on Android, you're forced to support a few more than that, and the populations stuck at each older revision are much more significant. Read the article for Android stats by revision. Here's an article with a bit more detail on the iOS side:
2) Performance and security updates are unavailable, making the user experience sub-optimal, and potentially putting users' personal information at risk.
>And don't forget the mandatory "crapware" that carriers pre-install.
ICS supposedly solves this problem but one has to wonder how many low-end Android phones will be sold in the next year (or even two?) that won't support ICS since the N1 won't be getting it.
Sadly I agree. Its also why I'm not too concerned that my n1 wont get a supported upgrade - I'll be needing a device that's down where the users are to dev & test. Ics will have to wait a bit.
That's highly doubtful. After the source is available the full transition to the new OS by all manufacturers, even the cheap ones, seems to take about 6 months. Gingerbread source was released last December and there were no Froyo devices being sold by summer.
What? There are still Froyo devices being sold now, as described in the article we are currently discussing:
That’s because every US carrier is still selling - even just now introducing - smartphones that will almost certainly never run Gingerbread and beyond.
The other point is that iOS is chockfull of crapware, though for some reason people ignore crapware if it comes straight from Apple. iOS 5 even prevents you from hiding some of the crap inside folders, I noticed this with the Newsstand app.
I think you're kind of missing the point of why the carrier crapware is bad. It isn't solely because you can't hide it or remove it, it's because in addition to that it is generally really poorly written software that has a terrible user experience and often only exists as an advertisement to some other product or service (ie. NASCAR app). Additionally in the case of some manufacturers and carriers, the standard UI is replaced with potentially less usable, but more importantly non-standard, creating an inconsistant user experience which fragments the platform.
TL;DR: if you buy an iOS device you get a consistant user experience. Thanks to the crapware, from Android you do not.
Why is that even significant? Do you have 5 iphones you use in your every day life that jumping between them would be painful if they had slightly different OSs? Doubtful. Phones have had inconsistent UIs for almost a decade before iphone, and all the iphone did was become the most popular. Razrs had consistent UIs right? But compared with a generic flip phone they were different. I don't see why all of the sudden this fragmentation and inconsistent UI is a such an evil thing or even a noteworthy subject. The manufacturers settings have no effect on apps unless they block the market place entirely. Then again I suppose the people writing articles about this subject are apple-enthusiasts and/or techies. I rarely see Jane Doe writing about fragmentation - and there is a good reason for that.
Pre-installed Apple applications are a whole different league from, for example, a pre-loaded unremovable trailer video for Confessions of a Shopaholic, which actually came on the last phone I had before the 3GS.
The reason you can't hide Newsstand in a folder is that it IS a folder.
Limiting yes but it's not "preventing" you, it's just a constraint.
I do agree that it's irritating that you can't uninstall certain stuff though. Stocks is the main example which I think a majority of users have little or no interest in and up until iOS5 the Apple weather app was decidedly meh.
You can hide it within preferences which is probably the main issue with many users. From what I've seen these apps matter very little in terms of storage.
Newer (late 2010+) phones have finally learned to start putting a reasonable amount of onboard NAND, so app storage isn't near the problem it used to be. The "disable" feature sounds like it also `chmod -x`'s the app in question so it can't start, not just hide away the icon.
The one bit I'm worried about is if carriers are going to be able to comment out the feature (and the data controls, which I'm far more concerned about getting removed)
I suspect they will not be able to remove the feature as long as it's an official Android phone. My initial guess is that this will be added to CTS, or at least the list of requirements for things that work on Android.
Thus far, Google has shown a remarkable lack of backbone when it comes to the carriers. They're free to kill/restrict tethering, block non-Market apps, disable SIP support, not to mention the non-removable bloatware situation that motivated the app-disable feature in the first place. I'm not yet convinced they're willing to say 'no' to the telcos.
Depends on the phone and how much crapware is installed. I ended up having to flash my UK Orange-branded HTC Desire because they'd installed so much that there was only enough storage left to install a few user apps.
I am using a branded T-Mobile HTC phone and I cannot agree more about unwanted crapware. I have a "Top Ten Apps" app on my phone which is preinstalled by T-Mobile, is not removable und runs permanently as a background process with 14mb ram (and I never started it) -.- I don't need to mention all those facebook, twitter and other "social" stuff where I don't even have accounts for.
Ha. Non-Orange phones are much better off in this regard (at least in the UK). And non-branded phones are even better.
I don't think carriers have realised just how much ill-will their crapware/crippling branding process engenders. In the past, they created a market for tools like Davinci, even though I resent having to use something like that to get MY hardware back into a sane state (and risk bricking it in the process). Now, they're pushing people towards rooting their Android phone. I haven't yet rooted my new (non-contract-encumbered) S2, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time. When I do, I'll be sure to install my usual selection of advert-filtering, revenue-denying proxies while I'm at it...
Even if the apk is installed in system partition (that means you can't uninstall it), you can mark it hidden and the system will never take it into account at startup, intent broadcast or in other situations. It is as good as removed (except that it physically can't be removed, because you may want to restore the phone to factory settings).
Do you really call "sweeping the crap under the carpet" "solving" the problem? I call it a workaround, at best. Users will often want the used space back too, not just hide the icon.
my nexus one shows as green, yes, i have all the latest software, but no fix yet for the touchscreen issue. That alone would make the nexus one RED since launch on that table for me, as this hints to zero support.
try to use your touch screen for 10min while the device is charging from an empty battery (some other use cases also trigger the bug, but this is 100% reproductible)
a combination of hardware and software. cheap hardware used in some lots require software recalibration on the driver.
if this does not happen to your phone you are in the happy minority of nexus one users.
to the rest of us, while using the touch screen for extended periods of time (shorted if using both fingers and/or charging) it will start to behave erradicaly. Touching one area will register a touch somewhere else. This is also affected by the pressure. the harder you press the less likely to see the bug. It will get worse and affect larger areas until you turn the screen off and on again (lock, unlock and it's back to perfect condition)
worth to mention, this does not happens with some mods. but i haven't rooted my phone as i use it mostly for development and like to test against the stock image.
I saw a very similar bug with my Motorola Cliq (which eventually, half-heartedly got updates) using the stock T-Mobile ROMs and Cyanogen Mod. Though I didn't track it down to that specific case I actually tended to use it while charging pretty heavily. Not sure if they're using the same hardware for part of the touchscreen, the S definitely had higher-end hw in general.
never thought about that... but it that happens with the two stock chargers, the iphone wall charger, the desktop dock, and with the car charger and running the GPS app.
the car charger+gps app is in fact the worst case, as it will not need touch screen usage to happen. and will happen very fast and all the time. so basically, using the gps for more then 20min, i know i will have to: press power button to turn screen off, press it again to turn screen on, type PIN, press the damn gps button i needed to press 2min ago.
While it may not be directly important to the final users (if you don't count security upgrades between versions), it definitely impact the ecosystem. If you need to pick a platform to develop for, you go for the more homogeneous one from a OS point of view. Also enterprises invest more in devices that have a longer support life. They want to buy something that even in 2-3 years is fully supported by the manufacture.
Enterprises don't care about device support life. They care, if the phone will survive for about two years. Then the employees will start bug you, that they want new gadget (I know, we have several hundred of them...).
Hard to say objectively, but I believe that actively updated software enhances perceived value. The human mind, even the non-technical one, is deeply attentive to change - as website iterations show, subtle improvements can have huge payoffs and even feed into the mind's reward circuitry. Every time there's a round of iPhone updates, I run into more than a few "normal" people that are delighted by tiny new features (anything from background wallpaper to iMessage read receipts). To people that don't usually keep their software up to date (but are coaxed into it by iTunes and now iCloud), getting new abilities without cost or effort is especially cool/rewarding.
Do you have any specific APIs or features in mind?
I think most app devs look at the installed base numbers and choose to support 2.1+ or 2.2+. I can't think of any APIs in 2.3 or 3.0 (or even 4.0) that are so wonderful that they are worth cutting off such a large part of the potential customer base.
So in that case, what about customers who DO buy new devices? Your argument suggests that developers won't build software to target the new capabilities their devices have. In which case the manufacturers' refusal to keep their old devices up to date is actually undermining their ability to sell new hardware ("Why should I buy a new android phone; all the software is written to target my existing two year old model")
There are many ways to make a new device attractive besides making it incompatible with old devices. Support for new radio standards. Larger, brighter, higher resolution screens. More flash storage, a better camera, more attractive industrial design, more built-in apps, and a more polished UI for built-in apps.
Will this sort of backwards-compatible improvement always be possible? Probably not. Someday all the specs will be maxed out. But for now it's a good strategy.
OS updates are probably more important for developers initially---having access to the latest and greatest API/phone features/bugfixes. This becomes important for consumers when the apps they want to use require a version of the OS they can't get.
I agree they're maybe not essential to a lot of consumers. Lord knows most people never thought about whether their dumbphone's OS was outdated or not, but I do think it's less than ideal for the ecosystem in the long term.
In terms of perceived value? Definitely. See all the flack Apple received for not supporting Siri on the iPhone 4. Now imagine if they hadn't released iOS 4 and multitasking on the 3GS.
They don't try to sell product by giving large commissions to the sales people. If you walk into an AT&T store, the sales associates won't recommend an iPhone.
Apple gets smart customers who understand the advantages of what they are buying, not customers who were duped into buying something because some clueless sales associate got a huge commission for selling it to them.
>This is quite different from buying, say, a Dell/HP PC vs. a Mac -- in both cases do you get a working, upgradeable machine.
But if you buy phones with unlocked bootloaders, it's just largely the same. As long as there is a device maintainer that has written an overlay for CM, you will get the newer OS updates. Before you jump on me and tell me "consumers shouldn't have to watch out for that", let's just remember the controversy still unraveling regarding Secure Boot with UEFI and Windows 8.
The people that consider an android or ios as equals and decide on device color or price won't even know what this table is about.
history is repeating. iOS is a IBM mainframe. with it's golden cuffs. Android is the radio shack PC. with it's "require soldering".
i give that android is still in it's infancy. and that the availability of OSes are few. just like in the beginning of the PC era all you had was BASICshells. all you have now for android is Android and some slighly different shells. but soon an android device will be like a PC. you can choose your linux distro. and then you will have the option of having full control of your mobile, just like you have of your servers.
There may be some truth to that for the type of person who reads HN, but it's certainly not true for the wider public. Most people don't care about having full control of their mobile device, they just want it to work.
It's not irrelevant to them -- it's a concern that they are unable to articulate.
Anecdotal support: for the Android users I know who fall into this group, it manifests as a vague set of complaints -- certain apps don't run, had to take it into the store a lot, app claiming to be available for Android not available for their phone -- which are all symptoms of having what is called here an orphaned phone.
So yeah, they don't know or care whether they are running version 1.x or 2.y. But they do know that they are generally dissatisfied with their phone.
As an owner of a iPhone 3G I don't agree with the solid green color that it gets. It was rendered unusable by iOS4.0, and although it was on "the current version" up until the release of iOS5 I don't recall it getting any actual feature from iOS4 other than faster javascript in the browser. So things are not as binary as depicted there.
It also seems like you're looking at Android through an Apple lens where the only phone updates come via the OS and having the latest version is the key metric. This means that e.g. any delay in releasing an iOS update has no impact on your graph, but if the Nexus team bust their chops to get an update out early, it makes every other phone look bad in relation.
What would it look like if you charted when the phones last received an update to their Maps, Youtube, or Gmail client apps from Google?. For Maps they would all be green I believe, less so for Youtube which is currently 2.2+ only so 15% of current devices wouldn't be able to get the latest version.
Glancing through the list of new features in iOS5 it seems to be equally split between a) things Android already had (twitter, notifications, no pc required updates), and b) things that are considered Applications, not part of the OS in Android (e.g. To-do apps, email/calendar improvements, e-magazine reader app) so there doesn't seem to be as much reason for Android users to have to upgrade.
So generally, from this point of view, you seem to be a bit loose with equating "support" from Google to mean new OS version e.g. your phrase "tracked down every update that was released for each device" isn't strictly true if you consider a newer version of Maps or the Market an update. And I would imagine the average person in the street would.
You saved me writing a post. Totally agreed on the features part which matters most for the updates second to security.
The only open issue with Android is security updates. Manufacturers often release minor patch level updates (HTC did recently for their logger fiasco for e.g., My Atrix went 2 minor updates before getting Gingerbread etc.) but that still leaves the phones vulnerable to browser based attacks at least.
With Google making Browser and many other system apps uninstallable/replaceable in ICS may be they can update it like every other app - through market.
With Android 5.0 Google should focus on near complete modularization - all user space apps / libs can be updated by Google independently of the phone just like GMail. This may not be 100% possible but they should do as much as they can practically.
I got my Nexus one around 14 months ago. I choose it because its was the official Google developer's phone and so mostly likely to get updated! Except of course we now know that the Android benchmark device that's less than 2 years old will not be getting any more updates.
BTW - I am willing to bet that when ICS source is released someone works out how to get ICS on it. I.e - I doubt that there's any fundamental reason it can't be done?
I think I bought it about 6 months before the 3GS came out. I no longer use it as a phone, but still use it for other stuff.
I also have just got a Nexus One (and have another Android phone). I'm not particularly disappointed that it's not getting ICS. I've not figured out one actual feature I care about that this announcement will deprive me of yet[1] (and as you say, I'll probably be able to put it on anyway. The key sticking point seems to be limited storage space, which custom ROMs have worked around before). Perhaps it'll mean I get better scores on javascript benchmarks with the default browser, but I'm keen to try Firefox anyway now that I have an ARMv7 device. But if the only thing I get is version number bragging rights, I'm not sure I'll even bother with ICS.
[1] Face unlock? No front facing camera on the Nexus One, Android Beam? No NFC chip. Better browser? I'm not sure how much the benchmarks translate into reality. Built in VPN capatablities? actually that's interesting. Folders? We're scraping the barrel now. Different multitasking UI?
Good points. Also since there will be loads of users stuck on Gingerbread / Froyo the N1 will probably be useful as a development test phone in my case.
I actually originally started doing it that way, but thought it was more relevant vis a vis release date than calendar date. I do intend to include that when I finish doing all of the phones. (Yes, I'm a bit OCD :) ).
Google apparently says less than 50% are on Gingerbread, despite way more than 50% of Android phones having been sold since 2.3 shipped.
I do think manufacturers might have gotten a bit better, but I guess we'll see. That's one of the reasons I want to do the next 6 months or so of phones.
That's every Samsung phone released in the US through mid-2010. I do intend to keep at it and add more. (& yes, Motorola does appear to be particularly bad)
Yeah, the European marketshare is a little different: Motorola releases few of their devices in The Netherlands (more in Germany & UK), but Samsung has a very high market share here.
If you're coming to the chart to see how well a manufacturer supports their products, the current layout is best. If you're trying to understand the history of phone releases and their current state, your suggestion might be best. I prefer the current layout.
It might be interesting to include whether a given phone is running stock Android or OEM skins like Sense. General consensus is that stock phones tend to be upgraded more often and faster, but it'd be nice to have some data to back that up.
Concur. Similarly, general consensus seems to be that the skins actively hold things up because manufacturers have to port them to each new OS on each device.
It'll be interesting to see how much life the skins have left in them in the post-ICS era.
I think you have proven something that many of us have experienced - Android may have a number of technical advantages but its rollout management is unreliable and chaotic and so many non technical users may actually be better off with IOS devices! Technical users may be able to update themselves with some effort (E.g. via XDAdevelopers) if they choose devices carefully and have a bit of luck !
Over the last few months I have been advising my non technically minded friends / family members to "just get an IOS device if you can afford it. Android is great and more flexible but App quality is generally lower and you can't be sure you can EASILY get updates even 6 months after you buy. With IOS you know the device will be supported for around 2 years and maybe even longer. With Android there is no guarantee!"
For me this is sad. I've got both an Android phone (Nexus one) and a tablet (HTC flyer). I am seriously thinking of getting an Iphone for my next personal phone and just accept the few restrictions - BAH !
At the same time, the US is one of the biggest markets around, so it provides a reasonable case study and it tends to be the first to get any upgrade. It would be a nightmare to try to do the same for Europe for example because of the fragmentation.
is the US really the first to get an upgrade? Most of Samsungs phones are launched first elsewhere, and US versions later come with their own carrier specific versions. The plain Galaxy S is not on that chart, and it would have received the upgrade before all the US variants.
It's an apple fanboy piece, presenting heavily skewed data, be it from either straight-out falsity or improper definitions:
1) Original iphone can't run iOS 4, but it gets green all the way through. Similar issues with 3G and iOS5. EDIT: I see now that the way you've done the timelines makes it confusing, and seems to be done intentionally to make your point rather than clarify what's going on.
2) 2.1 to 2.2 is a minor release. 2.1 to 3.0 is a major release. And Android 3.0 isn't a phone release at all - specifically stated as such. It's impossible for a phone to be "3 major releases behind" when there are only two major releases available.
Go back and remake the graph fairly. It will still show the story you want to tell, but you will be able to claim impartiality - and with it, better authority.
I was surprised at the iOS 4 omission, but for the love of god, please don't argue based on the version numbers alone. They never tell the whole story, and it depends on both software maturity and industry whether an upgrade is major or minor. There's also the fact that enough minor upgrades with a feature here and there over time can definitely accumulate into what would otherwise have been a major release.
For example, Android 2.2 added huge performance gains, which definitely makes a difference for what app developers can do and what you can run. It also added very useful new features like wifi hotspot that make the device much more useful.
Meanwhile 2.3 had a streamlined UI theme and added a new keyboard, NFC, gyros, WebM/AAC, multiple cameras, etc. Is that just minor?
As an Android user, I feel the graph is pretty representative of the ecosystem and how my experience compares to iPhone users around me.
For example, Android 2.2 added huge performance gains ... It also added very useful new features like wifi hotspot that make the device much more useful. ... Is that just minor?
Yes, I think so.
Compare to this snippet:
March 9, 2011 – iOS 4.3 arrived, delivering hotspot functionality, faster browsing, lock switch settings and improvements to AirPlay and Home Sharing. [1]
iOS gets to call hotspot and faster browsing a minor version, why not the same for Android? It's comparing apples and oranges. Similarly, the cycle for Android 2.0 to 2.3 was around a year (well... 14 months) which is equivalent to the cycles for iOS major revs, which are about a year each [2]
I'm currently trying to upgrade a bit of software at the moment at work that's a few minor points out... but those minor points contain some delicious features. Doesn't mean it's not a minor revision upgrade.
I think you should touch on frequency of updates: how often does Apple release, how often does Google?
Also it's not really fair to expect that every phone is going to run the very latest Android code, especially ice cream sandwich, which expects a forward facing camera, doesn't use the navigation buttons and so forth.
I do agree with the general premise that Android carriers/manufactures tend to release and abandon. They have no interest in updating the OS after the sale, which explains the popularity of Cyanogen.
As JoachimSchipper said, provide a timeline and mark release dates of Os versions on it as well. This way it would be much cleaner and gives more context.
I actually had letters on there ("E", "F") etc for releases but on top of the sales windows & the support windows it was just too much on one chart.
I do plan to provide all that information as a comprehensive list of phones/updates, ideally along with the ability to sort by carrier, manufacturer, etc.
Could you also make a chart showing, how long the phone is supported after it stops selling? For example, 3G was being sold up until iPhone 4 introduction, but the iOS4 was the last update it has seen. Similarly, 3GS is still being sold, but that does not mean that it will be supported for next three years.
This is exactly the kind of in depth nerdery I love. Thanks for putting it together. It seems like it would be valuable as a standalone resource. You might even be able to get some help from the community in a wiki format for keeping it up to date.
Excellent, to the point visualization of an insight. I love it when journalists can use the table-chart format to create a data-deep yet simple graphic that tells a better story than any plain narrative can.
You should include iPod Touch and how apple forces a charge for updates on that device.
This chart is also skewed a bit and should be based on intervals of releases rather than "years since". I don't recall seeing any iOS5 backports to iPhone 2G or 3G.
No, the original iPhone & 3G don't support iOS 5. But they did support the current version of iOS for 3 years after they were released - far more than any Android phones of the period.
(And, no, they don't charge for iPod Touch updates any more - that was technically an accounting regulation issue that the government changed.)
Though to be honest, for the iPhone 3G, the longer green bar is easily misinterpreted as a positive thing, when for the most part, iOS4 rendered the phone very painful to use. 15-30s wait times for camera shutter, frequent hangs, constant crashes in Maps, being the main pain points with the two that my wife and I owned. If they'd have continued security and minor app updates for iOS3 on the 3G, I'd have been much happier.
The first releases of iOS4 for the 3G were pretty bad but the subsequent releases greatly improved things. I recently sold my old 3GS so I updated it to the latest 4.x version and it was totally usable. Slower than iOS2 but for a 3.5 year old device I thought it was completely acceptable performance. In the rush to release iOS4 I think Apple didn't have time to optimize the 3G release. They seem to have learned their lesson with iOS5 for the 3GS.
There is an enormous difference between a 3G and a 3GS. My wife and I have one of each, both running 4.2.1. Her 3GS is usable, my 3G really isn't. The 3H suffers from lots of OOM-killed applications, and a huge number of 30-40 second pauses that freeze the entire UI. (Although AT&T seems to be equally good at dropping calls placed from either.)
I hear you on the 'Apple didn't have time to get the 3G release right'. That's fine. I have no problem with being stuck on iOS 3.x. Good iOS 4.x would be best... Good iOS 3.x would be almost as good... but bad iOS 4.x is awful. They either should have invested the time to do the release correctly, or just not ship the update to the 3G.
The chart could definitely be made easier to read. I also thought it claimed that the original iPhone got iOS 5 since current = 5 right now. Instead, the chart says that after three years, the original iPhone was still running the latest version at that time (iOS 3)
"Years since" is the right metric, because mobile phone contract lengths are measured in years, not in some ad-hoc multiples of the times between releases of the OS.
I own a one year old Galaxy S, and lately I have been holding my breath hoping Ice Cream Sandwich will be released for my terminal, whether by Samsung or by Cyanogen.
You're right, but as a current iPhone 3G owner not getting updates, I can say that I had a great life for this phone (3.5 years and counting) and that I'm not mad Apple decided to stop supporting it. It's a very old device with very little memory - very difficult to support I imagine.
And I'm okay with it because I know Apple has conservative product life cycles and will stick to it. And I know the next iPhone get will be supported for 2-3 years at least, as well.
> I can say that I had a great life for this phone (3.5 years and counting) and that I'm not mad Apple decided to stop supporting it.
I think ajanuary is talking about the fact that the 3G was still for sale until right before the iPhone 4 was released (see black rectangle). So people who bought a 3G right before the 4 was released (not necessarily a smart move) got about 10 months of support (support essentially ended in March 2011, with iOS 4.3)
4.2.1 did improve things significantly, but it only made the 3G go from "completely unusable" to "slightly painful to use".
The device is still much slower and less smooth than on 3.1 due to higher base memory requirements (as a result, not only are most applications slower to load some will not load at all on 4.2 and will instead crash due to going OOM and not being able to clear out anything upon receiving an OOM signal).
Improve over 4.0, which was completely and utterly unusable. I still have my 3G, so I can see what it is daily. A 4.2.1 3G is generally slow and laggy, but for the most part it works (as far as I'm concerned anyway: all tapbot applications run acceptably, Instapaper, Wikipanion and Terminology work and so do most — though not all — of my games).
Not saying it's great, or even good (compared to 3.1), but that I can use my phone is a net improvement over 4.0, which had essentially killed the bloody thing.
> In particular, the new Facebook app appears to be unusable on the 3G nowadays.
I wouldn't know about that. I have no use for facebook's application.
The latest iOS 4 version (I think it's 4.2.1?) is better than iOS 4.0, but it's still slower than 3.1.3.
The only reason why I had iOS 4 on my 3G was app compatibility. I eventually was frustrated enough to go back to 3.1.3 and it was like having a new phone again.
If you bought an iPhone 3G any time before June 2009 you were buying the latest phone. On a 12 month contract that leaves you with 3 months unsupported, and on an 18 month contract 9 months.
The lack of feature-updates is disappointing but they can get by forcing people to buy new phones for new features. It's the security side of this that could really blow up in their face. It's only a matter of time before these lingering security issues come home to roost. I wonder if Google has any plan to deal with the possibility of millions of Android phones and their associated user accounts being compromised? The risk is amplified by having all your eggs in the Google basket. What happens if your phone gets exploited and you just can't login to GMail tomorrow? (and you can't call Google for help) Unless you happen to be a high profile blogger or journalist you're going to have a hard time dealing with this type of thing.
There's a major point that can be added to the Why Don’t Android Phones Get Updated? section: Third party skins and interfaces.
HTC's Sense, Motorola's Motoblur and co can only introduce an engineering overhead and delays in upgrading. I would much rather they concentrated on making awsome hardware and leaving the UI to Google, rather than attempting to differentiate themselves in this way.
If I were Motorola or Samsung, though, there's no way I'd do that. Without differentiation, you're selling a commodity product. If you're selling a commodity, there are no margins.
I agree with you that it would be better for the Android ecosystem if they would, though.
2. Good support. You know, being able to call a human being on the phone.
3. Easy OTA updater (No more Kies and god know what else)
4. Write an itunes clone for syncing that isn't terrible. Or license double-twist.
5. Useful crapware apps. Apple differentiates itself with stuff like Siri. Why is Anrdroid crapware like "Buy this 4.99 caller ID service?"
There's so much room for improvement here. Considering ICS has all the eyecandy we need, its time to get out of the whole "Lets build a skin and add lots of crapware" that is turning Android into the smartphone ghetto.
FWIW, its not just Android. I know a lot of iPhone users who have never upgraded the OS and never will. They don't understand the utility of doing so. I'm afraid a lot of this conversation depends on how geeks use their equipment, which is fine, but the hoi polloi isn't clamoring for updates like they should be.
If you or anyone can provide actual evidence that manufacturer software increases sales or gets consumers to tolerate higher margins, I'm all ears. But short of that, I don't believe it. I've never met someone who said they preferred a phone because of the bundled software. I have observed two groups of people:
- Most people aren't conscious of bundled software or couldn't care less about it.
- A minority actively dislike it and are biased toward buying "Google experience" phones.
I don't have numbers, but I've definitely met folks who have said, "Samsung has a better interface than HTC", or the like.
The bundled software I'll grant is not really about differentiation - it's still a way to increase margins, though, by selling the right to bundle software on the phone or promoting your own services.
Yep. And if you look at all the internal politics that has been exposed by Nokia converting to Win Phone. All that politics will be duplicated at Samsung, Motorola, HTC etc. There will design, software and UI departments that are doing this stuff to justify thier existence.
It don't disagree with the rest of your comment but it's not true that there are no margins if you're selling commodity. An awful lot of money can be made by selling commodity. Just ooh at Lakshmi Mittal.
Every one of those companies has survived by finding some way to decommodify their business. Lenovo and Sony by hardware design, Dell and HP by sales and service.
Also: Windows PC manufacturers have always attempted to differentiate themselves in software as much as was feasible. They were never as free to modify the platform as Android manufacturers are, though.
Just because the expectations are low on MS desktops doesn't mean that other OSes shouldn't have updates. Many stay on XP primarily because of the cost to upgrade. This shouldn't be the case with Android.
To be fair, how many of these XP installs are still running a pre-SP1 version of the OS? Probably not much. Windows XP might be 10 years old, but it went through 3 major service packs that plugged many security holes, upgraded many frameworks and libraries, etc. Visually XP SP3 might not be different from the first Windows XP version, but under the hood, a lot has been fixed or upgraded. If I remember correctly, XP is still getting security updates to this date.
Software compatibility is the key difference in here.
To this day, virtually every application built for windows will run on windows xp.
Does the same applies to android? I don't think it does. Many android apps require newer versions of android.
I believe phone manufactures want to push compatibility lifetime so they can sell more devices.
Most people don't know this, but Google actually retains the ability to hotfix core security issues without the manufacturers. This has happened with devices when a weakness was found in how passwords were transmitted for sync. Also, manufacturers push out security updates from different teams than their Sense/Blur/etc teams.
I think that the fact that the chart stopped at June 2010 makes it looks much worse than it is now. Android is newer than iOS and works on a very different environment. Support 4 devices is much easier than 4 thousand.
If you extend this chart to 2011 you will notice that the platform is more mature and most of the phones will receive ICS (my wife Galaxy S is a relatively old device and will get it).
Here's the thing: Device manufacturers / carriers can say "this device will get this upgrade", and then fail to deliver on that upgrade. I wouldn't rely on what they've promised.
One of the biggest points that the chart brings out is that by the time most Android phones DO get an upgrade, that upgrade is no longer current. So, while ICS might come to a lot of phones, I sincerely doubt it will happen in a timely manner. One of the biggest flaws in the Android ecosystem is the ridiculous software update cycles. Entire communities have been created to try to fill that gap (rooting & ROMs), but it's something Google needs to address directly.
Note: I have a Samsung Epic (Sprint's Galaxy S), and I've been waiting months for a promised Gingerbread update.
If the N1 won't be getting ICS it's highly likely none of the phones with a similar class of hardware will either. That's gotta be at least 50% of all Android devices. Most carriers are still selling phones today that are guaranteed to never be updated again.
Motorola Milestone XT720 released June 2011 (USA: August)
Runs 2.1
No bugfixes
No updates
No upgrades
Buggy as hell. 2.2 upgrades and flash support pledged by Motorola sales/support at the time of release in the US -- later clarified that those employees had been "confused" when the mothballing was made official in late November.
Those Apple green bars look quite nice, but I'm not a fan. Maybe add some Windows phone.
The problem as I see it is that since Android is Open Source, the manufacturers don't abstract their innovations into a HAL. For example, Motorola's FM radio and HDMI support is peppered all over inside the core eclair framework. So, someone has to mix it all together again with each new release. Usually in the FOSS space, we like to believe that the effort of maintaining private forks encourages companies to contribute their efforts back to the open source project. That doesn't work here, because manufacturers like Motorola also have the viable option to simply abandon their forks. Which is even less effort.
Apple has a huge economy of scale--only four or five devices (most very similar) with relatively humongous market share per device. The personnel/device ratio obviously supports a much better customer experience than any Android device can offer (with the exception of perhaps the Android developer phones).
I can only assume Microsoft knows what they are doing and enforces abstractions and barriers that limit the scope of manufacture monkeying.
It's funny that these kind of long-term "features" don't get taken into consideration for any of the phone reviews. Its probably one of the most important features of a phone.
I'm currently torn apart between buying an iPhone 4s and the galaxy nexus, but given that I can expect the iphone to be supported and updated instantly and regulary for a long time, and not with any of the android phones (less than 2 years for the original nexus phone), I think iphone it will be.. despite prefering the openness of android.
There's a flaw with that list ... it makes it seem like iOS 5 is supported on iPhone 1 and iPhone 3G. It isn't and there's nothing you can do about it.
It is deceptive, and for HTC G1, the first Android device, official support may not be good, but you can painlessly install Froyo on it, because it isn't locked and Froyo works well on it. You can also install Gingerbread for that matter, but CyanogenMod dropped the support for it because of severe hardware limitations.
Basically if you get a Google blessed phone, like the Nexus One, or the Nexus S, or the next Nexus, you will be able to install the latest Android as long as the hardware itself is capable enough.
I do agree that iPhones are a lot more comfortable.
The chart cuts off after 3 years - the point is that the original iPhone was supported with the current version of iOS for 2 years after the last one was sold (minus two days - iOS 4, the first version to drop support, came out June 21, 2010).
On AT&T, at least, most iPhone customers are eligible for an upgrade after 18 months because of the cost of their plan, so everyone was eligible, by a significant margin, for an upgrade before their phone was droppped.
True, and I've heard that iOS 4 didn't run so well on the iPhone 3G in the first place. However, even once support was dropped, the iPhone 3G was still on the current major version (4.3, a relatively minor update, is the version that dropped 3G support), and it doesn't seem like apps required 4.3 until well after that version was out. That's a big difference than being 1-3 major versions behind on Android (especially considering the rather substantial changes in each major version of Android).
Don't buy a galaxy nexus. I was an Android fan boy and bought the Nexus One. "It's a Google phone!" I thought. I figured it would get timely updates and be a stable phone. It's far from stable.
I think a good anecdote for my frustrations is navigation. When I first bought the phone, I wasn't able to turn the screen off during navigation. I would turn it off, and it would turn itself back on draining my battery. An update came along and fixed it. For a little while it worked as I expected. Another update came along and now I can turn my screen off when navigating but 50% of the time when I do I have to unlock my screen.
Over time Android and it's core feature set have been consistently inconsistent. At first it's forgiveable because you assume upgrades will fix it, but its hard to call it anything but extremely poor quality at this point.
Sad but true. Keyboard or Market or Launcher or something crashes every day on my N1. These are core OS components on the reference device sold by the platform owner.
The ridiculous thing is that these apps relaunch and work fine on the 2nd or 3rd try, so why does Google give me an annoying crash popup instead of relaunching (like Browser is sometimes clever enough to do)
But would you also like to do it for your mom and dad and wife and aunt and neighbor?
If Android requires free geek labor to live up to its potential I sure am against it, because it would be my free labor that Google plans with here.
Your mom, dad, wife aunt and neighbor wouldn't even know what the hell you are talking about so being on version X has no particular significance to anyone outside of the tech community.
Developers care. What use are the new shiny features in Ice Cream Sandwich when I need to make my app compatible with phones on Eclair or Froyo to access a sufficiently broad portion of the Android install base? If developers are wary of developing for Android - especially the latest-and-greatest - that will affect the satisfaction of regular users.
Nexus phones and "other Android" phones are almost entirely different breeds. That's the sad thing, people use Sense or Blur devices and get a bad taste in their mouthes when the pure Android experience is often more pleasant and consistent.
While it's definitely a problem for Android and extremely disappointing that devices under contract are not supported with new versions, looking at it on a device basis is somewhat unfair : the actual number of such handsets 3 versions behind in the real world are miniscule - according to the actual usage statistics, 84% of users are on 2.2 or better, and the functional differences between 2.2 and 2.3 are fairly small. The percentage of users on < 2.0 are down to ~2% at this point.
I'd much rather see the platform being pushed forward than spending great amounts of time trying to shoehorn it onto extremely old devices used by 2% of people.
1. Anyone who cares about OS updates would only have ever owned three or four of the phones on the chart.
2. Anyone who cares about OS updates doesn't keep a phone for longer than 2 years. Most spring for an early upgrade after 1.5. Many (like me) finagle a new one every year or so.
3. My wife has never updated the OS of any of the 3 iPhones she's owned. I believe she is representative.
Whilst I agree that this is a problem (especially since it looks like my Nexus One won't get the the upgrade) a mitigating factor as an app developer is Android's backwards compatibility.
For instance is my app targets 2.1 it will run on all on 2.1 and above which is currently ~97% of all active devices.
The graph is debatable for the 3G: its last update was 4.2.1 released 28 months into the phone's lifecycle, but it did not get iOS 4.3 release in March 2011. Talking about "major version" sounds like a lie/cop-out in that case, since iOS receives pretty major updates in "minor" versions (4.3 included personal hotspots, ASLR, a JITed javascript engine, settings rearrangements and reworks, the ability to cancel an application update or remove an application being updated mid-download, ...)
From a developer standpoint, the Major version releases are far more important. All I have to choose is "am I going to support 3.1.x devices, or am I going to limit myself to 4.x devices". Even better, now that iOS5 has arrived with (very pleasantly smooth) support for the 3GS, the choice is "do I support 3.x or 5.x" since the last years of devices ALL support the APIs in the most recent OS. That is huge.
Just yesterday I realized that a long-standing bug is fixed by iOS5, and that since nearly all of our customers will be running 3GS or newer hardware, I can depend on that fix with confidence when we release our next version soon.
Also note that the graph goes out only three years, conveniently skipping the fact that the original and 3G will never get iOS 5. You'd think Apple had a perfect record, when in fact there's a bunch of yellow on their graph too.
That chart is terribly cooked. It leaves out important devices like the Nexus S which had good support, and includes a ton of clunkers in lieu of the most popular phones (e.g. no Galaxy S variants) which tended to fare a little better.
That said, the point the post is making is valid and important. But the graphic is sensationalized junk. It's a platform flame masquerading as product research.
> Also note that the graph goes out only three years, conveniently skipping the fact that the original and 3G will never get iOS 5.
Considering no Android device comes even remotely close to three years of support, and three years is well outside the renewal cycles you can generally expect, I don't think that's really cooking anything.
> That chart is terribly cooked. It leaves out important devices like the Nexus S which had good support
The Nexus S is barely 10 months old, and is about phones which had been released as of June 2010, 6 months before the Nexus S appeared...
> That said, the point the post is making is valid and important. But the graphic is sensationalized junk.
It's not ideal in the least, but calling it "sensationalized junk" is pushing it too far by a long shot.
How do buying apps works on Android and all its versions? I remember buying apps on my first generation iPhone that then wouldn't support iOS 3.x but the Store still let me buy it. Is it the same on Android (but worse since there are so many different versions around)?
The in-device market app won't see unsupported apps. If you go to market.android.com you can see it, but you will see a note telling you if some, all or none of your registered devices supports it, and an option to install it on one or more of them, so when you do upgrade or get a new device you can push any apps you've bought or installed previously to it.
To me, Android is a fragmented soup sandwich. I like the idea of having choices for hardware, but under Android:
- You can't assume what's going to be on the phone, software wise. Each maker evidently messes with it, sometimes even changing the interface itself. I've also read stories of bloatware being added.
- You can't be sure how software updates are going to be handled, because that varies depending on maker and carrier, meaning you might not get updates they same time others do (this is also a problem for Windows 7 Phone).
- Crappy cell provider logo plaques on the hardware (I detest that).
- Multiple/competing app stores.
I believe that Android has a lot of promise, but Google really needs to start exhibiting some control over what's going on.
the interfaces and multiple app stores are strengths of Android. If I don't like the default launcheror the default lockscreen or the keyboard, I can change it. Customization is a strength. It might be hard for IOS users to understand. Also multiple appstores is a strength because, competition is always good for the consumer. If you are afraid of the relaxed rules of the google market use amazon. If you want huge user base, use appbrain.
Customization is fine, when end users do it, but companies should not be messing with Android like they do (or at least, they shouldn't be able to refer to their Frankenstein creation as "Android").
I'm getting sick of Google's "see what sticks" and "let the end user fend for himself" attitude. I really wanted their various platforms to work, but now I'm just getting tired.
I compare Google's Android ecosystem to a restaurant:
I ate once and received wonderful food and service. I go there again next week and the food is cold and the service is rude.
Android's inconsistency is as big problem for Google as it is to the restaurant - if it's inconsistent, I stop going.
I own several Android devices, with the SGS2 being the latest. If it is going to be inconsistent with the update & timing as the rest of them - next time I'm going to the competition, whoever it might be.
It's an important omission not to mention that Android-based phones prices are declining at a much faster pace than iOS based phones. This is important because in many cases updating from one android to the next version (and sometimes to the next next version) is less expensive than buying a simple iPhone, rendering the need for further support unnecessary.
I don't know about the middling phones, but flagship Nexus and iOS phones have been $540 - $600 unsubsidized. For a 2 vs 3 year lifespan (to be generous to Android), you would need a $400 Android to balance a $600 iPhone.
You can't compare a $100 vs $200 subsidized phone, since that is just hiding the cost in the contract, which can be avoided.
I'm in the UK, and here you can upgrade at any time - you'll just pay more for the phone if you upgrade within your current contract period.
As for environmental practice, there's a number of companies that'll refurbish used phones and sell them on, and they'll even give you a bit of cash for it if it's a reasonably recent phone. Here in the UK most of them will send you a prepaid envelope you can just drop your old phone in, and mail you a check when they receive it.
Yes, it does play to the carriers' customer retention biz plan for folks to upgrade HW to get the latest OS annually rather than when the contract runs out.
Yes, it's 7 that were "never" and 5 more that were "weeks", so 12 total that were "weeks or less". I struggled with that phrasing a bit - either way seemed wrong.
and to think i switched from a series of Nokia phones (because they loose support every 6mo, to the point you can't even buy a working headset cable or extra charger for them) and bought a nexus one because i thought "spending $700 to buy an OPEN phone directly from google will get updated software for life and consistent use of cables and standards"
To be fair, you do get to use all of the new accessories and cables. Plus if you want to run ICS, while Google may not support it, it certainly seems like Cyanogen will have a version for the N1.
the desktop dock and car dock was discontinued what? 4 months after the launch?
HTC only resumed selling 1.5yrs later. During that period the car dock was selling for $200 used on ebay. I have no idea if HTC still sells those now, but wouldn't be surprised if not.
As for "new accessories" i bet most of them will use the near field thingy and be useless for the nexus one.
I have yet to see a new /accessory/ use NFC (really, the only thing I've seen use it is Wallet-like applications and check-in type applications).
The desktop dock is still sold by HTC, but the car dock doesn't appear to be. Regardless, they're just a device that holds the phone and charges it. There are plenty of generic docks that still /do/ that (and probably a few third party ones that do it as well).
Apples and oranges. An actually useful version of this graph would compare the Google phones to the Apple phones, and then in a separate table, compare the support for OS updates for other parties using the operating system (Apple would have no entries in that second chart, of course, but that's their choice).
In the first hypothetical chart, I believe Google's support for Google phones compares acceptably well with Apple's support for Apple phones.
It is an issue of Semantics. Buying a Sense ridden phone from HTC and buying a Nexus from Google mean two entirely different things about the consistency of the phone and the timeliness of the software updates.
Right, I was talking about my original parent's point about how to make it fair, the chart maker should have split off the ones not made by Google and just compared the Google made ones vs. the Apple made ones. But not many phone purchasers actually care about that comparison - which company spawned the better ecosystem, they care about the phone they end up with. Hence, throwing them all together like he did in comparing the ecosystems was the appropriate thing to do.
Note that I of course have no gripes with Android OS/concept itself -- it's a good contender to iOS. My gripe is with the current gouging of consumers by hardware manufacturers/cell phone companies, of the fragmented/poor/outdated hardware coverage in many models, lack of upgrades, et cetera. And don't forget the mandatory "crapware" that carriers pre-install.
This is quite different from buying, say, a Dell/HP PC vs. a Mac -- in both cases do you get a working, upgradeable machine.