
Only 1.2 Percent Are Using Android Marshmallow on Their Devices - hacker_mon
http://techlog360.com/2016/02/only-1-2-percent-are-using-android-marshmallow/
======
blisterpeanuts
Many of M's changes are "under the hood" and less obvious to the average user.
If you compare a Lollipop handset and Marshmallow handset side by side, the
user experience is very similar. M wins, but the differences are more subtle
than, say, the Kitkat-to-Lollipop transition or, especially, the Ice Cream
Sandwich-to-Kitkat transition.

The other factor at play is that people are using larger, more functional
handsets than ever, with larger batteries that are going to take longer to
wear out (albeit, increasingly non-replaceable batteries). Screens are more
scratch-proof and cases are preventing breakage. A 5 inch phablet from a year
and a half ago is still pretty functional today and has replaced people's 9.7"
iPads for many day-to-day uses. People are not replacing their devices at the
same pace as in 2011.

Plus, it's going to be months before OEM's get around to updating their huge
installed base. I wouldn't hold my breath.

~~~
knughit
M is the first release since J where almost all the UI changes were
improvements.

------
r1ch
If my 3 year old Nexus device isn't getting Android M from Google themselves I
have little hope for other OEMs.

~~~
knughit
Has Android ecosystem ever given a hint that a device would be supported after
2 years? Certainly for phones you are supposed to get a new one from your
carrier.

~~~
darklajid
But .. why? I mean - if that device works perfectly fine, why buy a new one
for a _software_ upgrade?

And even that won't help in general (I was bitten by HTC, LG and Samsung in
the past. Basically every Android vendor is crap and the GP calls out Google
for being only slightly better).

~~~
yeezul
Because software upgrades more often than not includes a lot of bells and
whistles. You can go ahead and try to update a Pentium 3 to Windows 10. Will
probably work, but it wasn't intended to.

~~~
darklajid
Now that's just BS, sorry.

Okay, the Pentium 3 is not 3 years old, it's more like 20 (soonish). I'd bet
that there are quite a lot of machines out there that are >= 3 years old,
running Windows 10. Or more appropriately, running a recent Linux
distribution.

Sure, at some point the hardware capabilities become a problem. But I just
don't see that for a random operating system (Android in this case), after 2-3
years.

The real problem seems the infrastructure - every vendor claims that it is a
hellish effort to move all their useless crap and customizations, all their
closed source blobs and magic fluff to a new AOSP base. And _there_ lies the
core problem. If vendors would stop messing with random UI changes to 'be
different', if manufacturers wouldn't hide their drivers, only THEN would your
hardware argument come into play.

If I technically _could_ upgrade my late HTC Hero to Android M I might find
the performance lacking - although again: I fail to see why the basic
operating system wouldn't work just fine, playing games or trying do watch HD
videos on a tiny display notwithstanding.

------
GreaterFool
Isn't the problem with Marshmallow adoption due to the fact that you just
probably can't get it on your phone due to carrier/manufacturer nonsense?

Apple pushes their OS to all devices, even if it bricks them. After iOS9
upgrade my iPhone 4s is practically unusable :)

In the end the consumers have very little choice in this matter. I can't go
back to iOS8 (and the bloody phone was bugging me _every single day_ to
upgrade, so finally I did). Android users have not much say in this regard
either.

~~~
wodenokoto
I'm using my 4s on ios9 for hours every day. If it was bricked it would be a
pretty silly thing to do.

~~~
GreaterFool
I mean bricked as in unusable because it's too slow for anything. Not bricked
as in dead.

The usual fun stuff involves turning off with 30% battery left and Google Maps
burning through whole battery in MINUTES.

There was a class action lawsuit about it, so I'm not the only one! If you
iPhone still works, count yourself lucky!

~~~
wodenokoto
You might need a new battery. I did. Those things aren't expected to work much
more than 2 years. What you are describing is not a software issue.

You can get a 3rd part battery installed for 50 bucks.

------
AdmiralAsshat
This article would be more accurately titled "Only 1.2 Percent of Phones Are
_Allowed_ by the Telcos to Run Android Marshmallow". Do you think it's due to
any kind of apathy on the user's behalf? I'd be thrilled to have Marshmallow.
I upgraded to an HTC M9 from my M7 because HTC promised that the M9 would get
Marshmallow.

Nonetheless, it's four months later, and I'm still waiting for Verizon to
allow me the privilege.

------
mrmondo
I perform regular network audits and it always amazes me how many insecure,
outdated android devices people are using - often they're even running
services that are remotely exploitable. Quite often we find that such devices
run phone-home beacons and it can be quite interesting what data is being sent
back to Google and URLs presumably related to installed applications. On a
semi related note last week I found that someone's brand new Samsung tablet
was seeding torrents, I spoke with the person and we looked over the device
carefully, it was not at all clear that although they thought exited the
application it was still running and seeding out what looked to be updates to
peers online without any indication.

~~~
louhike
Most smartphones manufacturers tend to stop to update them quickly (it doesn't
go more than 2 years for non-major products). And low-end devices cannot run
newer OS/softwares.

I stopped updating most of my softwares on my phone because it was making my
phone too slow, even by deactivating notifications/background processes I did
not care too much about.

------
PaulHoule
It is funny how Windows 8 got bad press, but w/ Android it is like if you want
to get anything newer than Vista you have to buy a surface.

I like Android M, it fixes many of the regressions that were in Android L.

~~~
mrmondo
You wouldn't believe how much data Windows 8 and 10 send and receive on a well
populated network with Internet access, we observe a great deal of phone-home
requests and often have found Windows connecting to external up addressees
that appear to be within azure that are sending unencrypted or overly verbose
data in the background.

~~~
drdaeman
I don't think Android-with-Google-Play-Services (not AOSP) any better in this
regard. Never owned or observed network activity of an Apple device, so no
idea about those.

<offtopic:rant>Gosh, I'd wish there'd be a wiki full of packet dumps and
protocol analysis, showing what modern software really is. So when a topic
"$software is spying on users" happens one link can show what's exactly is
sent (sure, there'll be a lot "some identifier, meaning's unknown" stuff
there, but still), and, possibly, refutes popular myths too.</offtopic:rant>

------
petra
I don't understand why Google didn't move almost everything to play services
or seyhing similar , and fully solved this issue?

~~~
anilgulecha
IMO, they're working towards it, but slowly. Boiling the frog slowly helps in
not scaring it away.

~~~
liotier
There are already many applications that won't run on my Cyanogenmod 4.4.4
because I refuse to have any Google binaries onboard... I hope that this is
not the future.

------
robk
It's disappointing there really isn't a great high-end Android phone these
days that's competitive with the iPhone 6S. All the mainstream higher end
units either have screens that are too big or lack something in features IMO.

~~~
vetinari
The unit size is not proportional to display size.

iPhone 6S has display size comparable to Xperia Z5 Compact, yet the Xperia is
a much smaller phone. iPhone is sized similarly to the original Nexus 5, yet
the Nexus has much bigger display.

~~~
bydo
Even without any bezels at all, the 5"\+ screens that seem to be the cost of
entry to high-end Android devices would still be too large for many to use
comfortably with a single hand.

Though the 6s and Z5 Compact actually have very similar ratios of screen
coverage: 65.6% on the 6s[1] vs 68.9% on the Z5C[2], according to GSMArena.

1:
[http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_6s-7242.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_6s-7242.php)

2:
[http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z5_compact-7535.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z5_compact-7535.php)

~~~
vetinari
Well, you might try the 5" phones. Two years ago, I also thought the same, and
then I got the original N5. Last autumn I changed the phone to Z5, not Z5C,
because I considered Z5 more comfortable to use.

> Though the 6s and Z5 Compact actually have very similar ratios of screen
> coverage: 65.6% on the 6s[1] vs 68.9% on the Z5C[2], according to GSMArena.

The 11 mm difference in length is subjectively huge. It's best to have both in
the hands, at once.

------
Wonnk13
Curious to get feedback from game developers, what their experience has been
working with multiple devices, software version and now Android TV. What's the
best way to get up to speed with shipping games on Google Play?

~~~
iainmerrick
Android game developer here. The fragmentation is massive and annoying and
very hard to deal with. I've found it best to try to work around the problem
by minimising my OS dependencies where possible. This is actually easier for
games than for apps -- games can take over the whole screen and have their own
weird UI, while apps have to integrate nicely.

I'd say: \- Find a nice robust framework. I'm using the built-in
NativeApplication and I regret it. I think SDL might be a good bet. Lots of
people like Unity (but it seems very heavyweight to me for small games). \-
For a portable game, C or C++ is your best bet right now. (Or Unity's C#.) \-
Pick a nice baseline API level and stick to it. You can actually go right back
to API 8 (Android 2.2!) and you get OpenGL ES 2.0, which is an important
milestone for games. I'd like to update my games to ES 3 at some point, but
that only works from Android 4.3 onwards (fewer than 50% of users) so I'm
holding out for now. \- Avoid using Java if you can help it! Seriously. \-
Avoid using the file system if you can help it. The APIs are very bad and the
hardware is often bad too, many manufacturers seem to cut corners here. \-
Figure out a good crash reporting / feedback system. I haven't actually found
a good one for native apps, I'd love advice on that! HockeyApp is great on the
Java side. \- Figure out a good testing system. I ended up just buying lots of
old phones and tablets on eBay and Amazon. Getting a good mix of screen sizes
and CPU types is key (there are quite a few x86 tablets out there, it turns
out).

I haven't even looked at Android TV yet. :)

~~~
Wonnk13
Wow, i've published a few small apps but know nothing about games. What would
be your number 1 improvement to Google Play you'd like to see?

~~~
iainmerrick
Ooh, good question... I just started using Steam for a PC port, and its killer
feature is the way it only syncs the changes for each build. So I can fix a
bug, upload an update, and get it in players' hands within minutes. I'd really
like to see that on Google Play too.

In Play you currently have to split your app into "expansion files" if it's
above the maximum APK size, upload each file in full, and then it takes hours
to actually push the update out to users.

------
spectrum1234
Apple and Android have very different strategies here. The result of Apple
waiting until the OS works on most hardware means they never have articles
like this published.

The real headline should be this: Android has 1.2% of users using a brand new
OS that Apple would never ever release until >50% of users could be using it.

It's not that other users and phones are behind. It's that Android itself is
so far ahead.

------
btreecat
One of the reasons I bought my particular variant of my LG G4 was the unlock-
able boot-loader. Running ROMs of my choice helps me stay up to date. I have
been on marshmallow since this past Dec and am glad to report everything runs
very well. I no longer force 2D acceleration and the UI is very smooth and
responsive.

------
bpicolo
Still convinced this sort of thing is why the Web is still (and for the
foreseeable future will be) the platform of the future

~~~
yeezul
How is this related to Android?

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cocoflunchy
I have 0.65% usage for my app on Google Play... too bad because the new
permission model is a lot better.

~~~
ericfrederich
I kind of liked some of the 3rd party ROM solutions to permissions. With
Google's new system you can only grant or deny right? ... then the application
can behave differently depending on what the user chose. The 3rd party ROMs I
remember had another option to supply the application with no contacts, or
fake locations, etc but the app was none the wiser.

------
marvel_boy
Compare to this: iOS 9 at 76%. Forget building for iOS 8 then.

------
unixhero
I am! :)

------
ericfrederich
I am, and my battery is suffering for it.

Kind of bad when you're running a stock factory image on a Nexus device (Nexus
5) and your battery can't last a day at the office with next to ZERO usage.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Interesting, one of M's big innovations is supposed to be better battery
usage. At least one report I've seen[1] suggests that standby time on a Nexus
5 is improved by Marshmallow. Have you studied the battery usage report to see
what's sucking up all the wattage?

1\. [http://9to5google.com/2015/08/24/android-m-triples-
battery-l...](http://9to5google.com/2015/08/24/android-m-triples-battery-
life/)

------
vacri
Hardly surprising: an OS with a major revision number, released only 4 months
prior (including the busy Christmas season), hasn't yet been tested-for-
release by telcos and pushed into shops or upgrade servers, then finally
filtered out to the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their
phone and buying a new one (or rooting and upgrading their phone manually or
abandoning their contract to get the marginal improvements over now-mature
products).

Must remember to write an article on this strange phenomenon.

~~~
zzalpha
No kidding...

To me, the real story is that if you cover off Kitkat and Lollipop, you've got
70% of the Android market. Add Jellybean to the mix and you've basically got
the entire userbase covered.

For a platform known for fragmentation, that's not nearly as bad as I was
expecting.

~~~
icefox
How do android developers deal with that? Do you only use APIs that came out
before or with Jellybean?

~~~
zzalpha
In essence. This is easier than it sounds, though, as there are a number of
support libraries out there that provide emulations of newer APIs for older
versions of Android.

