
Android updates are getting slower and slower, despite Google's best efforts - whalabi
https://unlikekinds.com/article/android-updates-are-getting-slower-and-slower-despite-googles-best-efforts
======
cageface
This is definitely a problem but in practice it's not as dire as this article
makes it sound. So many of the essential pieces have been factored out into
the support libraries and independently upgradable components that Android
devices actually get more regular updates in some respects than iOS devices
do.

For example, I have to update my entire iPhone OS to get an updated web
browser or photo library or keyboard. Google can update all of those every day
without a reboot.

As an iOS developer I can't use new OS features until all my users have
upgraded. As long as what I need is in the support library I can adopt the
latest and greatest for Android right away.

~~~
whalabi
Hi, author here

You're right about platform features used within apps, many (most? all?) are
made available to developers with the support libraries.

However, users will get none of the following until they get Pie (for example)

* ML adaptive battery

* App actions (ML predictive app shortcuts)

* Digital well-being dashboard and limits

* A lot more, as shown on this page (there's a lot of smaller items in the collapsible categories at the bottom): [https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/](https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/)

Each update has a heap of interface improvements, and users miss out on these

~~~
johnchristopher
> * ML adaptive battery

>

> * App actions (ML predictive app shortcuts)

>

> * Digital well-being dashboard and limits

These sounds like gimmicks to me (ML buzzwords). I'd welcome an update that
would sort alphabetically the apps I want to share content with for instance.
No AI needed for that.

~~~
enitihas
The ML adaptive battery update is awesome. I got it on my Moto One Power and
the battery life has substantially improved

~~~
johnchristopher
> Adaptive Battery, in a nutshell, is about figuring out which apps you use
> frequently and keeping those apps in memory, while the apps you don’t use
> often are purged once you’re finished with them. Put another way, Android
> Pie can adapt to your usage patterns so that it only spends battery power on
> the apps Adaptive Battery thinks you’ll need.
> [https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/28/how-android-pies-
> adaptive...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/28/how-android-pies-adaptive-
> battery-and-adaptive-brightness-work/)

I don't know. Wouldn't be easier to simply close the app when a user closes it
?

~~~
Monory
Fully-closing apps requires them to re-initialize them from scratch after each
re-open, which is cpu-heavy (thus also battery-heavy) and slow.

A frequent usage pattern, also, is quickly switching between several apps.
There's no definite “close” on mobiles apart from force-quits, which are
unhappy for all apps, too.

~~~
johnchristopher
> Fully-closing apps requires them to re-initialize them from scratch after
> each re-open, which is cpu-heavy (thus also battery-heavy) and slow.

Thanks for the explanation, I didn't know starting from scratch was so
expensive. I had always wondered (and fumed) about that but it makes more
sense now.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Security updates are becoming more dire, but _feature_ updates between
versions has been dwindling since the early days. I've had an Android phone
continuously since 2011, and while I could detail a laundry list of stuff we
got from Gingerbread -> Ice Cream Sandwich or KitKat -> Lollipop, I can't
think of many "game changers" from Marshmallow on that made each new update a
"must have". Just trying to think of the ones I actually noticed or used:

Nougat: Slightly better battery with doze mode; Built-in Night Light so I no
longer need cf.lumen or Twilight

Oreo: A better AutoFill API for my password manager

Pie: Adaptive battery? I _lost_ the ability to record calls when my phone got
the Pie update, so I wouldn't really consider that a feature.

So basically, other than having to use a third-party screen temperature app
and needing to manually copy-paste passwords, there wasn't much meaningful
difference in the experience between my Nexus 7 running Marshmallow and my S8+
phone with the Pie update.

~~~
__MatrixMan__
> there wasn't much meaningful difference in the experience between my Nexus 7
> running Marshmallow and my S8+ phone with the Pie update.

Reading this on a Nexus 5, running marshmallow. I stopped upgrading when I
stopped seeing a reason to, now I just get the old models on the cheap and
only occasionally wonder if I'm missing out.

In those moments I'll remember your comment, stop wondering, and continue
treating my phone like the sub-$200 commodity that it is. Thanks.

~~~
everybodyknows
Reading this on a Nexus 5X running Oreo 8.1.0. Formerly happy owner. Now,
after accidental pocket-tap on "Update All", seeing glacial performance in
core apps e.g. Gmail, Maps. No "revert" option in GUI of course. Maybe
possible with ADB ...

Where you write "stopped upgrading", do you mean hardware only -- allowing
Google system plus apps to push all software updates?

How do you assure yourself that your Nexus 5 has gotten adequate security
fixes?

~~~
ndiscussion
Not the parent, but you don't. I run a Galaxy S9 but as far as I'm concerned,
the phone will be a paperweight in 1 or 2 more years.

iPhones have better longevity, hence their higher resale value.

------
cheeze
The shining example of Google vs apple for me is the package manager. Since
Android D, updating my apps has caused the phone to slow to a crawl. Fps drops
heavily, apps are laggy, etc. There is no option to only download updates when
charging. Google has done _nothing_ about this for years now.

I still use Android because I need the control. But parts of the platform are
just inexcusable (imo) in 2019.

Dont get me wrong, Apple has their own problems as well. But Fps drops aren't
one of them (at least on my iPad)

If only apple let me actually have a non-terrible home screen...

~~~
lvh
What control does Android give you that you want? (I’m legitimately asking: is
there an immediate pragmatic reason, or is it a principled stance against
walled gardens?)

~~~
wlesieutre
The replaceable launcher is a big one. Tasker was another (though I heard
Google Play was cracking down on non-accessibility uses of accessibility
features for security reasons?)

I switched back to iOS when the SE came out, but I still miss Nova Launcher.
Especially being able to put two actions on each dock icon, one for tap and
one for swipe up. So if you have something like friends split over two main
chat platforms you can stuff Discord and SMS apps in the same icon and have
them both quickly accessible.

~~~
cheeze
I just can't believe that 10 years later I still have to have a grid and have
to hide apps I don't care about in folders.

~~~
Anechoic
_have to hide apps I don 't care about in folders_

iOS lets you delete most 1st party apps: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208094](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094)

~~~
_coveredInBees
I think you and all the replies to the parent have missed the point trying to
be made. If you view the homescreens in iOS as your desktop, you don't want
all your apps littering it with shortcuts. The op is talking about having to
setup folders to hide away apps that they use rarely but don't want to
uninstall. Android handles this in a far better way, where you have an app
drawer that pulls up all your app icons on a grid that is easily searchable if
you want to get to any installed app. That frees up your homescreen to be used
for exactly those icons and widgets that you want, which is a lot nicer than
the iOS way.

~~~
apexalpha
What stops you from putting everything in a folder called App drawer, except
the most used apps you want on your desktop?

~~~
Someone1234
The hard limit on how many apps a folder can hold?

~~~
joecool1029
If you weren't aware: You can fit 135 apps in a folder. Folders inside of
folders are also supported so there's practically no limit.

~~~
Someone1234
I was aware since I just made that exact point. You want an "App drawer"
folder that has a hard limit of 135. Not to mention the terrible UX of folders
at that scale.

------
maaaats
> _Android devices aren’t kept up to date, leaving their users unable to
> benefit from advancements in the platform._

What advancements? Both iOS and Android have for a few years reached maturity,
not much exciting with each new update. At least not without new hardware, as
most updates are to support something physical (notch, fingerprints, face scan
etc).

I used to hate my phone not being updated, so switched to a brand of Android
that kept them up to date. But lately I don't really mind. Only reason I
upgraded to Pie this weekend (after being bugged by the updater for months)
was because of a few emojis I couldn't see properly when being sent to me. The
update hasn't done anything big. Things are a bit rounder, the clock is now in
the wrong corner. Some BLE issues as well, making me regret the update.

~~~
ebg13
> _What advancements?_

Security?

~~~
grumpy-cowboy
You can fix security bugs without forcing your users to upgrade entire OS.

------
inetknght
Update adoption is getting slower because people (or perhaps just me) are
frustrated with updates removing/changing functionality, making the device
slower, or causing additional bugs beyond whatever was "fixed".

That's on top of the fact that my carrier refuses to stay on top of updates
for my device anyway.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> the fact that my carrier refuses to stay on top of updates for my device
> anyway.

I don't get why the carrier has to be involved at all. It has nothing to do
with them at all so why do they even get a say in when a phone gets an update
?

~~~
rcarmo
As someone who spent the better part of two decades at a carrier (I joined as
an acqui-hire to build an ISP), I've always been fascinated by the amount of
crap carriers insist on having pre-loaded (and kept working) in device
firmwares.

Carriers want (demand, even) that their online portals, customer support apps
and (most importantly) ringtone shops be pre-loaded on devices, and have
always tied that to critical firmware drops for network defaults, radio
compatibility testing, and a lot of other (truly critical) functionality that
only actually exists on the device's radio baseband and has zero to do with
the handset OS these days.

Source: I was one of the program managers for the flying circus that was
Vodafone 360, when we tried to work with Samsung to build a vertically
integrated handset like the iPhone. This sank (mercifully) without a trace,
and to this day I summarise what happened by explaining that Samsung actually
had two engineering v-teams: the Galaxy team and... everyone else.

And we got everyone else. It doesn't excuse a lot of what was decided, but it
was instrumental in killing the service.

~~~
grumpy-cowboy
They will not be able to force their crap in my future Librem 5 phone.

~~~
rcarmo
I appreciate the independent thinking behind this comment, but seriously, what
completely broke the carrier model was the iPhone.

When we started discussing customisation with Apple, all they ever allowed us
to do was add a default bookmark to Safari. Period. Finito.

Looking back, that was the sanest thing any handset manufacturer ever did for
the entire industry.

~~~
Starknaked
How did carriers incentivise customisation for manufacturers? Did Apple
essentially turn down "easy money" to maintain product integrity?

~~~
rcarmo
What do you mean by incentivise? Either manufacturers delivered custom
firmware or they carriers didn’t sell their devices, period. Apple changed all
that.

~~~
Starknaked
I see. That makes sense if you upgrade/buy through your carrier. That isn't
something I've ever done so my carrier has never been a limitation on the
phones I can get. I guess Apple made the carriers realise that everyone will
get the phone they want with or without them in the purchasing cycle.

~~~
oblio
Most people get their phones from carriers.

------
waynenilsen
The biggest problem is that android is not focusing on the low end where most
of their users are. They need to make the UX on these older and slower devices
_better_ with every update, not worse

~~~
zaarn
On the low end there is Android One, which does take out all the bloatware
that slows down most of the low end. It's pretty good in my opinion.

~~~
slezyr
May be you meant Android Go? Android One is full of google's own bloatware.

~~~
zaarn
I guess you've never had the pleasure of all the bloatware that OEM's put into
low end phones?

The last samsung phone I bought had 2GB free of 8GB on delivery, almost all of
that space being used by their bloat.

Google's own software isn't that heavy in comparison and Android One comes
with very little of it, most of which you can still disable.

------
wyldfire
Aside: this headline is poorly worded IMO. It sounds ambiguous with the
execution duration of a software update. "Android updates are getting less and
less frequent" or "fewer android updates happening in the field" etc might be
clearer.

> The reasons for the slowing updates aren’t clear

IMO it is clear: people often "update" by retiring the old device and buying a
new one. The metrics in this article are all from Google -- they show market
share of android release (out of android devices).

People are refreshing less often because smartphones released in the last few
years are: (1) not terribly different from the ones on the shelf now, (2) more
expensive than they've ever been. People are spacing out their upgrade cycle
because their current phone is good enough and because phones are more
expensive.

------
gniv
I misread the title. The article is about the rate of adoption of new
releases.

Personally, I think it's due to people keeping their phones longer (and, of
course, carriers not passing on the major updates).

~~~
chrisseaton
> I think it's due to people keeping their phones longer

Why can't the old phones run the new versions of Android? There's been no
architecture change has there?

~~~
mandevil
They (mostly) can, just the various companies involved have no incentive to
actually do the work necessary to do it. Treble is supposed to make upgrades
easier, but as the article points out, most people don't have Treble, and the
carriers and manufacturers still don't seem to care, even with a lower amount
of effort involved.

------
barrkel
Not particularly on topic, but OnePlus is a pretty decent choice if you don't
want to pay Pixel prices but get an almost stock experience with reasonably
rapid OS updates.

~~~
cs02rm0
For about two years.

Even OnePlus, which is better than most, tails off after that. They've just
released a public beta of Pie for the 3T, which hadn't had security updates
for the last four months or so.

~~~
pantalaimon
I'm running Android 9 on my OnePlus One (2014) through LineageOS and it feels
smooth as always.

~~~
cs02rm0
Lineage is great, I've run it on an HTC (M7 I think?) previously until it
died. But it's not for everyone and some manufacturers make it harder than
others.

------
mikece
This is why Google is devoting more and more resources to the Fuchsia project:
to replace Android with an operating system that supports over-the-air (or
WiFi) updates like iOS does and Windows Mobile did. It's the only way Google
can effectively fight their fragmentation issue: get everyone to upgrade to
the latest OS version.

~~~
swiley
Fuscha is a kernel and has absolutely nothing to do with this. There are
plenty of Linux based Oses that don’t have this problem. (This is even more
the case with android since the really hairy stuff like GPU drivers aren’t
even part of the kernel.)

The problem is that the entire android user space is built as a single
monolithic project that gets forked and closed by the OEM and all of the
components have to be updated at once.

IMHO: fuscha will probably make things worse: at least with Linux the code
needed to boot the device gets published due to the GPL combined with the
monolithic kernel architecture making community projects like cyanogenmod (or
whatever it’s called now) possible. I seriously doubt that will be the case
with fuscha, it will just get forked and closed like the AOSP components do
now (which have the same license.)

~~~
tssva
Fuchsia is a full operating system and not just a kernel. The Fuchsia OS uses
the Zircon kernel.

------
matchbok
Dear lord. Less than 20% adoption a YEAR after release?

iOS gets that in a few hours.

~~~
oblio
OEMs + carriers.

------
chenning
I haven't read the entire article, but the title and first few paragraphs and
images/tables are unfair and misleading. This looks like a stereotypical jab
at Android that you would expect from a company like Apple Inc. If you want to
compare Apples to Apples (no pun intended) you should compare how fast updates
roll out to the first party devices iPhone and Pixel. I've used the first two
generations of Pixel now and I've never had an issue receiving updates. Google
obviously has less control over what Samsung, LG, Huawei, do and that's not
even taking into consideration carriers.

------
tytso
The article is only talking about major upgrades (e.g., going from Oreo to
Pie). It is _not_ talking about security updates, which are minor releases.
People seem to be mixing up these two things. They are different.

------
aeturnum
Since updating to Android 9 I've had the weirdest problems. Phone calls will
randomly drop (neither I nor the other person is moving, happens on wifi and
mobile) in the middle of the call. No apparent connection to internet traffic.
I've also started seeing an issue where the phone will call someone and
connect but not start playing audio or transmitting audio. Also, if I'm on
wifi and then leave wifi (or turn it off), the phone will silently fail to use
the mobile network. It will display that it has 4g / 3g / whatever, but data
doesn't work and phone calls fail. The only fix is restarting the phone.

I have a Nokia 8, which isn't a particularly popular handset and I'm thinking
of switching to an old Samsung S8 or something - but it's striking to me how
badly the experience has declined since 8. The phone was wonderful with 8!

~~~
the_pwner224
If you're in the US, you may want to avoid Samsungs after the S5 - they all
have locked bootloaders, and you will not be able to move away from the
Samsung ROM. Maybe you don't think that's important now, but chances are
you'll be keeping the phone for a few years, and you don't know how your needs
or wants will change by then.

Also it's nice (and not very hard) to install AOSP/LineageOS to get a lighter,
faster, smoother, bloat-free, but still feature-rich experience, without all
the tracking and shady stuff that OEMs put in.

I used to have an S5 with LineageOS + F-Droid (no Google apps); the phone was
faster and the battery lasted longer than my new S9 (from which I have purged
all the unnecessary apps I can including Google's stuff).

------
BubuIIC
> That is, half of Android devices were on an OS that hadn’t seen an update in
> at least 2 years.

This seems quite wrong, older Android versions do receive some security
maintenance releases from google. It's of course up to the device vendor if a
particular model gets it though. This is info is a bit hard to find but it
seems like KitKat was supported until October 2017, Lollipop until March 2018
and Marshmallow until August 2018. (taken from wikipedia and here:
[https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Android-5-Lollipop-still-
exis...](https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Android-5-Lollipop-still-exist-
in-2018-2019))

So you could be running a phone with KitKat, which was released in 2013 but
still got the last update 1.5 years ago.

------
javitury
Those statistics should be broken down by new purchases and updating old
devices.

At the time of Android 4.4, many people got an Android device for the first
time, so adoption was high. At the time of Android 8, the market is already
mature and many people still hold to their old Android 6 device.

~~~
stackoverflo
let go of my android 6 device yesterday. was a cheap device but i didnt feel i
was missing out on anything significant

------
alexandercrohde
Not sure why I should care. Can't think of a single feature I'm missing on my
S6.

~~~
cheeze
The ability to update apps on battery power only. The ability to not have
ridiculous lag during updates of my apps.

Better integration with password managers (works great in apps, not so much in
Chrome)

S reasonable desktop experience (shout out to Samsung DeX FTW)

------
nfriedly
Im on a Pixel 2, so I get fast updates. But I almost wish they were slower, or
would just stop breakimg things and removing features. My phone, after more
than a year of great service, starting dropping calls in my house again. I
poked around and realized they removed the option to prefer Wi-Fi calling. So
now because it can get a weak cellular signal, it ignores my strong Wi-Fi and
I get much crappier services a result. #$&@!

------
tobyhinloopen
The short life-time of Android phones & the app's questionable privacy
policies are the 2 major reasons I'm sticking to iOS, even though I think
Apple is a major asshole.

Android is an awesome OS, but the app store feels "unregulated" and I feel
like I'm not in control who and what copies my data.

------
liuyanghejerry
If every manufacturer is encouraging people to buy new phone, why do people
even want to upgrade their old phones? The truth in China is that Xiaomi and
Huawei releases their new phones very frequently. Now people are more and more
focusing on screen, CPU, RAM, cameras.

------
therealmarv
But manufacturers getting faster and faster in pushing new phones in the
market at the same time.

There is no real return on investment in fast Android upgrades (which only
cost money for them). There are also other risks (things will get slower,
things will break).

It's all about the money.

------
wink
Yay, I am the 0.01% without even caring a lot :D

Very happy with my Nexus 5X, and why would I upgrade? The Pixels are just
expensive and I don't see any benefit. A shame that I'll be in real trouble if
this one ever dies.

~~~
wbercx
The Nexus 5X is a nice device. How long have you had it for?

~~~
wink
Bought two of them on 16./21\. July 2016. One stopped working reliably (didn't
notice its SIM all the time) last November, mine's still working perfectly.

------
surbekznrlsnt
Google should have two streams for their updates; security only and everything
else. Vendors would have no problem with conflicts in UI or apps if the
updates were security only and they could be pushed immediately.

I'm also angry at Google for removing functionality. I won't upgrade to Pie
because then my call recording app won't work and I make a lot of customer
service calls. I could root my phone but this introduces other issues. Google
has made people reluctant to update.

------
kissgyorgy
This is called a "technical debt". :)

