
The state of Android updates is still dire - pjmlp
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/4/20847758/google-android-update-problem-pie-q-treble-mainline
======
whalabi
While writing about this [1] recently, I made a chart which shows the adoption
rate of each version of Android, X months after release, according to Google's
own numbers.

It is indeed dire.

Each new version of Android is typically reaching less and less devices, X
months after release.

For example Android M, released in 2015, was on 24% of devices accessing the
play store 12 months after release.

Android O, released in 2017, was on 14.6% of devices 12 months after release.

Here's the chart:
[https://i.imgur.com/yRDIEAs.png](https://i.imgur.com/yRDIEAs.png)

Google stopped releasing these numbers on their developer dashboard, and I
think it's possible that the reason is because they're terrible.

[1] [https://unlikekinds.com/article/android-updates-are-
getting-...](https://unlikekinds.com/article/android-updates-are-getting-
slower-and-slower-despite-googles-best-efforts)

~~~
PopePompus
Part of the reason for slow updates may be that new versions of Android really
aren't bringing a lot of user-visible new features anymore. Android 10 brought
dark mode (which is still only supported by a small subset of Android apps),
but not much more that the end user can see. Are the users still "languishing"
in Android Pie really clamoring for Android 10?

~~~
blue_devil
The lagging updates has nothing to do with users, it's a corollary of Google
having strategically chosen to build a fragmented ecosystem, whereas Apple
built their walled off garden.

Apple can incentivise updates much better because they control the whole
ecosystem. To achieve this, Google would need to somehow _force_ OEMs to
update Android, but the fragmentation makes this a herculean task.

~~~
murgindrag
As opposed to computers running Windows? or Ubuntu?

More fragmented than Android. Continuous updates even for hardware from the
year 2000 (a few paid along the way).

~~~
AdrianB1
Actually Windows and Ubuntu are not a good example because the end user can
easily perform updates without the computer manufacturer having anything to
say. I would upgrade my mom's Android 8 phone, but I cannot. It is not the
fragmentation, it's who's in control of the updates.

~~~
cookiecaper
Heh, after years of prodding, my mom _finally_ gave up her Android 4.4 phone
last month. Instagram stopped allowing her to sign in from it. It was replaced
by a Pixel 3, which no longer allows her to easily set up her third-party
ringtone app among a plethora of other annoyances and disappointments.

"This is why I never want to get new phones or computers" was muttered
probably about 15 times in the two hours I was helping her salvage content
from the older device.

------
victoro0
I think that a lot of people miss the point that most people don't care about
updates. Most people want a phone that does the same thing when it was bought
and as many years later as possible, as the battery allows.

It's the same thing around passwords. People don't use weak passwords or reuse
their passwords because they don't know any better, they do it because they do
not care about whatever is protected by the password. I personally couldn't
care less if someone stole my Facebook or that some bad actor may abuse
something in my phone to send something to China. These digital things rank
very low on the list of my priorities, and like me are a lot of not very
technical interested people.

Some people buy cheap phones knowing they won't get updates, we know, we don't
care. And we are happy to have the option not to care, we do not want more
expensive phone with constant updates, just like we don't want the mandatory
use of password managers. If we cared we'd buy/use them.

~~~
scarface74
Seeing that 80%+ of iOS users update to the latest OS within the first 3
months according to Apple’s charts, why would you think that if Android users
could update they wouldn’t?

~~~
dx034
iOS is very annoying about updating. It's much less work to update than to
constantly ignore warnings. High adoption rates therefore don't invalidate OPs
point.

~~~
wtmt
I hate that iOS downloads the updates in the background and uses up data
quotas without warning and without consent from the user. The only solution to
prevent inadvertently updating is to go to the storage settings and delete the
downloaded update, only to have it get downloaded automatically again in a
matter of days or weeks.

~~~
jedieaston
Low Data Mode in iOS 13 should make this stop (although they don't say it on
the support page, it shouldn't do it if they are blocking App Store/iCloud
updates...)

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210596](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT210596)

------
NKosmatos
What is missing from this article is that many manufacturers “force” you to
buy a new phone, in order to get the latest Android version and security
patches. It’s implied indirectly, where the author states that we as users
keep our (expensive) phones for longer, hence being left behind on updates.
The fact is that manufacturers want us to buy new phones so as to make profits
and stay in business, even though most of our “old” phones are capable of
running newer versions.

~~~
baroffoos
>even though most of our “old” phones are capable of running newer versions.

Its astounding what older devices are capable of with the right software. I
installed the community supported version of ubuntu touch on a nexus 5 phone
which is about 7 years old now and was stunned to see it was buttery smooth.
This device was running faster than my pixel 2. Even web browsing and web
youtube worked fine. Apart from the horrible camera and lack of an sdcard slot
you could actually use this as a main phone quite easily.

~~~
ekianjo
> ou could actually use this as a main phone quite easily.

except it has none of the apps you need if you belong to 99% of typical users.

~~~
jplayer01
Seems to me like the focus of his comment was the phone, not the OS. You could
just as easily install a custom ROM like Lineage on it and it’ll run perfectly
fine (aside from maybe the camera, which is quite outdated and poor in
comparison with new phones and I guess in our modern culture is probably a
severe negative).

~~~
baroffoos
It really is a shame that it is not realistically possible to upgrade phones.
Its somewhat simple to remove the camera and replace it with the same one but
it is just about impossible to put a different camera in.

The only way I see this could be done is if every oem committed to standard
shapes for every part but that would never happen because they shape and
layout of a phone is the only way they can make visual changes so people know
its a new phone.

~~~
jplayer01
Agreed. Even just a phone where only the camera is modular would be a
fantastic step. I've had 4 year old phones that run just fine but the camera
is unbearably bad. While I do have a DSLR, it's not something I have with me
very often.

------
veselin
The article is written by implying the wish of the author is the wish of the
users. No, users don't want updates. They get annoyed.

I am on Android 10 and honestly I wish I didn't update. The update bricked by
phone until I went in the bootloader to reset it to delete my data. Was it
great to have it on day 1 (essential ph-1)? Maybe 5 years ago I would say yes,
but now no. It wasted 2 hours of my time. Next time I will buy a phone with a
good camera instead.

My experience with Android 9 was similar, but didn't break anything. The UI
changes were just not good. I personally know the reason (worked with some of
them) - all (unfortunately really all, no idea why this wasn't fixed)
designers at Google are Apple users and have a bit if Apple envy. Apple can
change the UX for everyone and make users get used to it (even if it is less
efficient for everyone, which it is). Why wouldn't Google be able to do it? So
Android had the best app switcher, but converged to the iOSish variant. I wish
Google would just ignore Apple like Microsoft does it in their Windows.

In a similar way, most journalists are Apple users and there is one "right"
way to do things. So we get this nonsense in articles and blogs.

~~~
Darkstryder
You don't mention a big part of the puzzle : security updates.

Given the current state of infosec, any OS that has not received any security
update for a year or two is doomed to become a sitting duck for malware.
Device security is a whack-a-mole game where new vulnerabilities are found
daily and security updates are the only way we have to keep our computers
secure.

In a perfect world, UI-and-features-related updates would be optional while
security updates would be seamless. Also in a perfect world, older OS releases
would receive long term security support and you should not have to upgrade to
a more recent release to be secure.

Alas, we do not live in a perfect world. Apple doesn't provide any easy way to
accept security updates but refusing others. Android just doesn't seem to
provide a seamless update experience, either for security updates or not.

So you should really apply security updates, and if it takes getting other
updates for that, then so be it.

~~~
AdrianB1
If you are Apple, you cannot ignore the security updates. If you are one of
the 100 small vendors that sells some cheap Android phones, you offer no
support and nobody will complain. If most of the Android phones have no
updates, the entire market will not provide security updates, except a few
flagship models where Samsung and a few more top manufacturers will have to do
it to maintain the brand equity. This way you get to live in a world where "no
updates" is the norm and there is no incentive to change that: the people
buying $100 phones will not care about updates that they don't understand, but
will increase the price by $10-20. When sub-$200 market is 80-90% of the
market by volume the gold standard of no updates is set.

------
wldlyinaccurate
I've owned a Nokia 6 Plus for the last year and I've been pleasantly surprised
to receive the monthly security patches within a week of them being released.
If I buy another Android device it will probably be a Nokia for this reason.
My previous Samsung and OnePlus devices seemed to receive updates fairly
sporadically for the first year, and then nothing after that.

~~~
ip26
I only hope they start supporting CDMA across more models, or Verizon finally
axes CDMA. That's the rather large obstacle that has stopped me from getting a
Nokia.

~~~
opencl
You can already use phones without CDMA radios on Verizon, they're requiring
all new phones to support VoLTE and axing the CDMA network entirely next year.

------
ebg13
"can't" is such bs. Make it so that the kernel and OS can be fully updated
independent of device drivers and bypass manufacturers for distribution. Why
does nobody remember that Windows updates come directly from Microsoft and
that third party webcams just keep trucking along?

~~~
KingMachiavelli
The Linux kernel doesn't provide a stable ABI for modules so they have to be
atleast recompiled each time. There are some workarounds such as DKMS to
rebuild the interface when the kernel updates but I don't know if Android
provides it.

Last I checked a big issue was Qualcomm doens't support their SoC for very
long so manufactures have to tweak each devices 'tree' (it's unique kernel and
drivers) for each kernel update.

The whole point of project treble was to disconnect the Android version from
the kernel version so that manufactures could keep using the existing kernel
and drivers and would only have to recustomize the new OSI to their liking.

Turns out a lot of device manufactures still don't see much value in providing
timely updates since the general public doesn't even know what version their
currently running and are just as likely to hate an update than like it.

Personally, I feel Google's sluggishness to enforce update policies or change
how Android works is out of fear that Samsung will break completely and launch
their own app store and not have the Play Store, or rather Play Services which
is what Google needs if they want to power many of their online platforms
(where do you think Google map road conditions come from?, Or that feature
that shows how busy restaurants are?). Without play services on every Android
device, Android looses it's profitability.

~~~
zaphirplane
Yet Apple manages it, and they use Qualcomm components. What happens to the
Qualcomm drivers when Apple releases a new iOS version that works across
multiple generations of devices, are they updated by Apple or does Qualcomm
provide a new driver to Apple ? I am not 100% accepting the ABI argument the
drivers in the Linux kernel are not getting rewriting every release, sometimes
there are changes and I don’t know if applying those changes to drivers is
such a burden otherwise the kernel will be always broken

~~~
klodolph
> I am not 100% accepting the ABI argument the drivers in the Linux kernel are
> not getting rewriting every release, sometimes there are changes and I don’t
> know if applying those changes to drivers is such a burden otherwise the
> kernel will be always broken

I think you may be mixing up “ABI” and “API”. If you change internal kernel
APIs, you’d break a lot of code and have to go in and fix it. If you change
the ABI, you just have to recompile. The ABI does change pretty often and as a
rule of thumb there is no effort to keep it stable, the way you would if you
were writing a shared library (which ideally has both a stable API and ABI).
Drivers in the kernel are not broken because they are recompiled with the rest
of the kernel. Kernel modules from different kernel versions ARE broken and
this is why we have DKMS.

But just to talk about what happens here—Apple is the only developer of the
XNU kernel, and they have a fairly short list of iOS SKUs in the history of
iOS, and only a small portion of those get iOS 13 support—something like 12
iPhone models. So the support for all of these devices is right on the
mainline kernel development tree.

This is not how Android development works. You generally have a bunch of
different manufacturers, who get a team of engineers to get a fork of the
Linux kernel working on each device, and then they drop it and move on to the
next one. There will be various binary blobs involved, and integrating the
changes back upstream or downstream ends up being a pain.

And just to return to the original point, the Linux kernel developers are
actively hostile to any attempts to make the kernel ABI stable enough for
binary blob drivers to work. This is not a question about whether it is
technically possible.

~~~
pjmlp
Android has a stable ABI, it is called Treble HAL.

------
krschultz
Doing this analysis by SKU (device model) makes the picture look far worse
than it is. You should be looking at _users_. Ideally you'd be looking at your
own app's users which may differ from the general Play Store usage quite
significantly.

The most representative public data for a US centric app is Mixpanel's [1].
This has lined up with most of the apps I've worked on more closely than
Google's own dashboard [2].

If I were starting an app today with no data, I would set my minSDK to
Lollipop (21). If I had an existing app I'd be dropping support of any version
used by <1-3% of my user base.

[1]
[https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/android_os_adoption](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/android_os_adoption)
[2]
[https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards)

------
ggm
been burned twice (Lenovo, Motorola) with "yes we will" followed by months of
"we meant maybe" followed by months and then "no, we won't"

Tablets get less love than phones too. That said, my recent expriences have
been better than prior, but still somewhat dire.

"two years and its junk" is a pretty bad rule. it feels like formalized
planned-obsolescence.

------
seanalltogether
Quick warning for anyone wanting to upgrade to Android 10, if you're using a
custom alarm app, don't upgrade. The new OS has broken pretty much all alarm
apps that aren't the stock clock app.

~~~
randie63
I am using "Sleep Cycle" without problems. Poco F1 custom AOSP 10 Rom .

~~~
seanalltogether
Nice thanks for mentioning it. Just gave it a shot and it actually activates
the screen correctly which the others I've tried weren't doing.

------
mmanfrin
This shows Oppo as being the worst -- but I have had the last 2 OnePlus phones
(6T and 7Pro) that received updates within a month of a new release (and
OnePlus is Oppo).

------
vijaybritto
What if Android was designed in a way that meant the device makers had to
modify only the UI and not alter the functionality of the features. Wont this
have solved their problems? Im thinking this because many phone makers just
apply their skin on top of stock android and nothing more!

Things like settings UI can be fixed for all vendors so that we don't get
confused everytime we get a different phone! I hope fushcia does it this way!

------
cookiecaper
The key to driving voluntary updates is to separate the platform from the
product. There's no reason that Google shouldn't be able to maintain an
Android OS that looks and works just like it did the first day that the user
opened the phone.

Such a standard is _expected_ in commercial software because businesses won't
tolerate expensive disruptions to placate a vendor's vanity. If Google were
serious about maintaining a healthy Android ecosystem, they'd make platform
upgrades mandatory and transparent. Launcher and interface "upgrades" can and
should be optional.

As far as I know, Microsoft continues to fret over backward compatibility with
software that's probably older than their median employee, because their
customers expect nothing less. Moreover, customers demand a consistent
experience and have very little tolerance for arbitrary workflow disruption (a
point forcibly driven home by the crash and burn of Windows 8, in case it
wasn't already obvious enough).

RHEL releases are supported for more than 10 years and they function
essentially identically the entire time, somehow _without_ leaving users in
the breach to contend alone against a decade's worth of crashes and security
flaws, and believe it or not, there are specialized and boutique platforms
that take this type of thing even more seriously.

"Don't break the user's shit" is not only _possible_ , it's the baseline
expectation from any profesionally-managed platform.

Then we have Google saying "Hey, upgrade your OS and we'll change the whole
interface, break a third of your software, and force you to learn this weird
new 'no buttons' thing because buttons aren't in this year. No takebacks."
When that's all vendors have to offer, it's not a surprise that consumers
avoid upgrades like the plague.

While Apple is definitely closer to the Google side of the fence here, they've
paid a high price for it over the decades, penetrating only those industries
where the appearance of eccentric creativity is a larger asset than consistent
productivity. Since iOS devices are primarily a status symbol, it appears the
combination of getting the hottest thing and feeling compliant with the
overlords in Cupertino is sufficient upgrade motive for the ever-dwindling
number of iOS users.

Google should know their audience of "everyone else" well enough to know that
for most people, that dog just don't hunt. Maybe it's time for Microsoft to
draw its claws out of Nokia and see what happens if they take another pass at
the market.

------
JaceLightning
Stop. Fucking. Buying. Non. Google. Phones.

~~~
throwaway2048
<incorrect information>

~~~
dstaley
Wait what? The original Pixel was updated to Android 10. That's three years of
updates.

