
No one wants yearly Android releases - AdmiralAsshat
http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-one-wants-yearly-android-releases/
======
wccrawford
Maybe they haven't been to any Android forums recently? Users are _massively_
excited about new Android releases, often going to great lengths to attempt to
obtain it before their carrier releases the update, and even attempting to
port it to older phones.

The problem is the carriers and manufacturers, not the users' wants. They
aren't updating enough. And I can totally understand the pain for them, having
to QA all those new versions and release them.

~~~
gleenn
I used to get super excited. I've calmed down a lot based on how many bugs
there are that I experience on my Nexus 6p. I love this phone, I love Android,
but I finally get understand part of the reason carriers drag their feet and
reimplement stuff: they expect higher quality than Google delivers. Careful
word choice there: expect, not actually deliver. I enjoy the new shiny, but
there are some glari g bugs.

~~~
cableshaft
Google's OS having bugs is not really why carriers drag their feet to upgrade,
that's just a coincidence.

It takes money and time to upgrade all their carrier-specific "value-
added"(i.e. shit) software on top of the new operating system, and they
hesitate to do it, because they've already got it working, and taking no
action is much easier and cheaper than upgrading.

Besides there isn't enough customers yelling about it anyway (the ones who
really care only buy the phones with known fast OS upgrade cycles, like
Nexus).

------
edude03
"Unless Google is going to unveil some new mechanism for updating Android -
which would essentially mean taking it out of the hands of the hardware OEMs
and carriers"

Arguably this already happened, depending on who you ask. Google moved all? of
the high level APIs into the Google Play Services Library, which google can
update whenever they want, they can even enable / disable APIs as they see fit
(for example, google wallet if it detects you're on a canadian carrier)

Now the only reason to buy a new phone is if you want a new phone, otherwise
all your apps will work regardless of what phone / what version of the OS you
have.

~~~
bonesmoses
Not really good enough. There are _massive_ changes between OS versions. Until
a couple days ago, my LG G3 was still on KitKat. The underlying structure,
performance, and a lot of other significant details are directly tied to the
OS and can only come with an OS update.

And we can't get those because carrier stranglehold, proprietary drivers that
need to be compiled for every kernel variant instead of using generic hooks,
and so on. Android is still Wild West of smartphones, and it's embarrassing
that Google's updates are hilariously terrible compared to Apple.

~~~
edude03
I don't disagree with you, but I think we've come to expect too much from
software updates at the same time. For example, security updates and
performance improvements are often touted as the reason we should get software
updates more often. However no one expects say apple to replace the processor
in your laptop when a new one comes out.

Software costs money to develop, most users don't care enough to pay for
software updates (would your "mom" pay $20 to have JDK 8 support?) and unless
the update enables a feature the vendor expects you to pay for (say, iCloud or
Google Drive) no one is incentivized to provide timely updates.

On the flip side, software updates allow vendors to differentiate their new
phones (yeah they both have A123 processors, but this phone has snapMessage
*due to the new update)

I think the only other alternative is fully open source phones, which exist,
but in terms of updates they're not any better

------
andy9775
The issue doesn't seem to be that people don't want the new Android release,
it's that carriers don't want to give it to them. Here (Canada), if a new
device and Android version comes out you can forget about getting updates on
old devices. This especially bad when it comes to minor releases that include
security updates.

~~~
cptskippy
I assume the thought is that withholding updates would make the consumer
upgrade their device. The irony is that most users don't care or know what
version of an OS they're running and they only upgrade when the device no
longer meets their needs.

I suspect that if the carriers instead forced upgrades they'd see a much
higher rate of upgrades as newer OSes would bog down the older devices and
make them less usable. Users would become frustrated and upgrade to newer
devices out of necessity.

Not to mention every upgrade to my Nexus 4 has made the Bluetooth behave badly
in new and more frustrating ways.

~~~
brodie78382
> and they only upgrade when the device no longer meets their needs.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. My HTC M7 GPE is only just
beginning to show its age in terms of performance. My SO's Samsung S4,
however, has been literally unusable for months now: battery performance
issues, only able to run ~3 apps at once (low RAM), unable to update any apps
because there's no free space despite having around 50 less apps than me and
also despite having an SD card, overall performance is laggy & slow, certain
apps won't even run now, the list goes on.

These phones came out within months of each other in 2013, and in spite
several hardware advantages the Samsung is no longer meeting its users needs
compared to my M7. Of course, my SO has no idea _why_ this is, like you said
she barely knew what kind of phone she has (lol), but the end result is that
she's having to upgrade the phone (early, I might add), and the differences
can largely be boiled down to software and updates.

~~~
andy9775
I think the issue is that Android is becoming like windows is/was. By this I
mean that there is lots of built in bloat. For instance Rogers (my carrier)
automatically installs an NHL app, a ringtone app and other seemingly useless
addons. Further, Android API's tend to change quickly and the standards aren't
as strong as they are around the iOS ecosystem[0].

If google stops allowing manufacturers and carriers to customize the device
and handles upgrades we'll see the same stats as iOS has with regards to
market reach of the latest os version. Further, if they clean up the API's and
develop better standards its less likely that apps will crash phones or cause
significant lag or issues when running on old devices with a new os

0\. I say this as an android dev who only wrote a little iOS with swift.

------
jalami
I won't buy an android phone if it's not a Nexus. This isn't because I love
Nexus phones, they're just serviceable. I really want an external SD card, but
have to make due. I mainly want timely updates for security's sake. AOSP and a
rooted OMNIRom/CyanogenMod/Replicant Nexus is the closest you can get to a
mainstream, supported FOSS phone these days with the fastest security updates.

One of the real problems is carriers. They have no material incentive to push
software updates and are often in hot water about security updates. They
actually have a disincentive to push updates. If Samsung doesn't update the
Note X to Android Y, you buy a new Note X2 phone from them with fresh Android
Y. It's a broken system with misaligned interests all over. So, to contradict
the OP, customers, carriers and manufacturers want yearly android releases.

Another problem is the difficulty in updating between releases. I can install
Windows or Linux on any junker motherboard and get it to run, but I have to
pray to the manufacturer/carrier tag-team to allow my $800 phone to get the
next version a year later. Why can't we remove them from the equation, easily?
I'm sure this point is full of naivety on my part. It just smells like planned
obsolescence.

Another problem is the shift from AOSP to Google Play Services. The deprecated
Android browser even had unpatched security holes as 'wontfix, switch to
Chrome' last I checked. So many apps rely on GAPPS for anything and everything
now, what's the point of an open OS when everything is behind a blackbox
service?

Another problem is the centrality of the Play store. F-Droid is a life-saver,
but how can I get my Brother Printer Service driver? I can't download it from
Brother. I have to get it from Google Play. I've been spinning up a Genymotion
emulator with GAPPS just to download, repackage the apks I need and then move
it to my Nexus. Then I get hit with 'this app is not available for your
device/version/location' and it's spoofing the build.prop file to let me
download the damn apk. The whole ecosystem is DRM'd lockin at every turn.

F-droid allows private repos with closed source APKs, I wish a decentralized
system like that, like the web, would gain adoption.

~~~
chrisseaton
Why do you need the carrier to be involved in your decision to update your
phone? All they know about is your SIM card. Do they even know or care what
phone or version of Android you are running?

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Most of the readership on HR doesn't. But most consumers want their phones to
"just work" \- unless they personally feel the pain of unpatched
vulnerabilities, they expect that whatever is running on their phone continues
to work. So it seems that the carriers have decided not to risk keeping their
customers up to date (not wanting to take on any extra tech support). Carriers
don't generally care what you're running on your phone, but since many
handsets have locked bootloaders (and/or few people maintaining alternative
ROMs), choosing a Nexus device means being able to do what you want, which
could include being more secure.

~~~
chrisseaton
> So it seems that the carriers have decided not to risk keeping their
> customers up to date

But I don't understand how the carrier is involved at all. What if you update
your phone on WiFi so you aren't using the carrier at all. They can't
intercept that so how are they to blame for whether you can upgrade or not?

~~~
tssva
If you purchased your phone through a carrier it comes configured to only
allow upgrades approved by that carrier. At least in the US most people still
purchase their phones through their carrier.

------
chasing
TechCrunch claims there are 1.4 billion Android users. 7.5% of that is 100
million people. How many apps and services would kill to be able to reach 100
million people?

And just because a lot of people wait to update until they get a new phone
doesn't mean they don't care about that update. Or that handset manufacturers
don't care about the update. Or that Google should stop making new versions of
Android. Or whatever the author's point is...

~~~
chasing
Replying to myself, I know. But a related point:

So let's have fun with numbers...

1.4b Android users. 7.5% updated to the latest. That's ~105m.

500m iPhone users. 84% updated to the latest. That's ~425m.

(I'm pulling these numbers from different sources, but they're probably of the
right scale.)

My only point is that there might be an argument that Android's deploying new
versions on about 1/4 of the devices that Apple is, not 1/10\. Which is an
important distinction if your argument is that Google is failing at getting
people to update their devices.

~~~
gremy0
Yes but if you're going to be developing an app or service are you going to
choose the latest version of Android and get 7.5% of the market or are you
going to go down to lollipop and get 40% or down to kitkat and get 70%?

It's webdev for IE all over again supporting balls old versions.

~~~
shaftway
Except it's not really.

Releases are always additive, and (to my knowledge) have never removed
anything (even when they really really should have).

The only reason to target a newer version is if you need things that were
actually added to the OS (like fingerprint scanning). And even there it's
pretty easy to gate functionality. The vast majority of apps don't need to
care in the slightest and with appcompat almost everything useful is
available.

It's not like you have to make completely separate apps for Lollipop and
Marshmallow the way you used to for IE and everything else.

~~~
st3v3r
Not quite true. Handling WiFi changed in 5, and changed again in 6 (really
only relevant if your app deals with changing the Wifi state, admittedly). 6
introduced Doze, which can require different implementations of things. There
were a number of graphical things in 5 which, if you wanted them on earlier
versions (and your Design department does, and you're going to do it, dammit),
require fairly different implementations.

~~~
shaftway
Which things are these? And since generally there's a lot of effort to not
break old apps, why wouldn't you just do it the pre-5 way?

Also, just to check, we're talking about versions and not API level, right?

------
alyandon
People would probably be more excited about updates if they actually received
more than one or two minor updates from their OEMs and carriers over the
lifetime of their device.

I'm very happy now that I've switched to a Nexus device.

~~~
castratikron
I was happy with my Galaxy Nexus, too, until Google decided to stop supporting
it. Nexus phones aren't immune to that kind of death.

~~~
Grazester
That phone was a dog 18 months into its life. Google seemed to have struggled
getting updates to run at any speed on that phone. It was also rumoured that
Texas Instruments ended support of that SOC hence Google killing it off

------
flurpitude
"whatever is announced will essentially be an irrelevance since a year from
now it won't even have hit double-digit usage share."

I don't get the logic there. Why is it "essentially an irrelevance" just
because it takes time to reach a wide user base? Today's releases will have
tomorrow's wide user base and be as relevant as last year's releases are
today.

------
AcerbicZero
Desperate hit piece, designed to ignore Apple owns the hardware and the OS,
and Google only owns the OS (excluding Nexus devices). Had they compared
Nexus/Android and Iphone/IOS adoption rates, I think their would have been a
much more clear picture of the situation.

Articles like this always seem to be some awkward attempt at turning a
strength (Androids wide adoption, budget friendly alternative phones, etc)
into a weakness, via the magic of nuance-free comparison.

~~~
pjmlp
And people ignore that Google could easily put some clauses on their contracts
to force OEMs to upgrade, just like they have clauses obliging them to use
Google Play Services if they want to use the store.

It is all a mater of what Google is willing to put on their Android contracts.
No excuse.

------
JTon
TL;DR Author finds most sensational way to describe how most android users do
not like to buy new hardware to receive latest android version

------
IE6
I feel the author makes a lot of very incorrect assumptions about what the
consumer thinks about their phone operation system version. As stated here
already it is really the fault of OEM/Carrier as to why a new OS has a poor
adoption rate and as such adoption rate is no real indicator of customer
satisfaction or mentality. I really wonder how the author came to these
misguided conclusions.

------
ChemicalWarfare
I've only done a couple of hello world+ type apps on android natively and a
more involved POC app with Ionic before handing it over to the actual mobile
devs, so pardon my ignorance here.

From what I'm seeing, from the developer perspective these releases don't
introduce too much fragmentation. Tooling-wise things are reasonably seamless
too (with android studio). Am I missing something?

~~~
pjmlp
Yes, the OS API available in each version.

And although HN usually likes to bash Microsoft about bringing out new
libraries and frameworks, Google is also very good at making "last year's best
practices into deprecated APIs this year".

Which means multiple code paths if you want to provide good support across all
versions, even with the help of SupportLibrary.

------
eximius
Wrong: everyone wants new releases if the OEMs got it to us in a timely
fashion, but consumers want less to buy new phones every year.

------
erwinkle
How about the Nexus users who get the yearly updates immediately? I'm pretty
sure they care, I know I do.

------
km3k
"After a year, Android Marshmallow has barely managed to hit 7.5 percent"

Wow, years are a lot shorter than I remember. Android Marshmallow was
announced May 28, 2015 and was released with the Nexus 5X and 6P on September
29, 2015. So 11 months since announcement, and 7 months since release.

The author has a point about too few users being on the latest release, but
let's get the facts straight.

------
martinald
The same argument could be applied to IE6 when it came out. Noone wants newer
browsers more than every 3 years!

What rubbish.

------
Zigurd
Android has a different update model. It's inferior to Apple's, obviously. But
that's how life is when you have OEMs that insist on adding a lot of their own
"value" and who sell through the carrier channel.

In a strange way, this article confuses latency with throughput. It takes a
long time for each Android update to gain a majority of the installed base.
But it does get there. Slowing the frequency of updates will not change that.

Android continues to develop at a fast pace. Android N previews large-
tablet/desktop OS features like proper mouse support and resizeable windows.
This would not be the time to slow the release schedule.

One reason I hope the tablet market grows to where it can influence the
overall Android market is that tablets do not need carrier approval for
updates.

~~~
pricechild
> One reason I hope the tablet market grows to where it can influence the
> overall Android market is that tablets do not need carrier approval for
> updates.

Phones don't _need_ it either.

~~~
Bluestrike2
No, but the agreements in place more or less guarantee it. Back with the
original iPhone, Apple was able to push Cingular into ceding a lot of control
over devices. Google was never able to do the same. Partly because they needed
to make up marketshare, but also because it went against a lot of the Android
ethos (IMO) that pre-dated even the iPhone.

I love open-source, and I'm a huge believer in the possibilities it
represents. But I think those beliefs blinded people in the beginning, who
assumed that carriers and manufacturers would similarly care. They don't.
Hell, they're even slow to respond with security updates. Google is moving in
a better direction, but it'll take a while. If we're really lucky, carriers
and manufacturers won't notice the gradual changes and raise a fuss.

You'd think that, as long as they get to customize things to their heart's
content and install their bloatware at some point, they'd be able to realize
the benefits of a better update model. But then again, major UI changes that
are clearly visible help differentiate new devices. So there's a nasty vested
interest at work there as well.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Apple still has a lot of extra measures in place to work with carriers, they
just do it ahead of announcing updates instead of dropping the code like
Google does and then waiting for everyone to fix it for their equipment.

From my recall, Apple actually has a "Verizon team" that works on ensuring iOS
updates meet all of Verizon's certification requirements for release ahead of
announcement, which is why Apple software updates never suffer that terrible
additional wait Android updates have before they end up on Verizon phones.

------
wyqydsyq
I own a Google Nexus 5X and I want yearly Android releases.

Seriously, this whole problem is caused by manufacturers and carriers
installing their bloatware (which is what people _really_ don't want). Without
said bloatware (goodbye TouchWizz) there is no barrier to users updating when
a new release is pushed by Google, because carriers won't need to lock
versions to ensure new versions of Android don't break their bloatware.

So if you don't like it, stop being part of the problem. Stop buying anything
non-Nexus (particularly Samsung), they are detrimental to the Android
ecosystem.

------
moron4hire
So, after hearing about how "fragmentation will kill Android!" for... oh...
ever since the first Android release, how's that prediction working out? Seems
like fragmentation isn't actually as scary of a problem as it's made out to
be. Perhaps we really could just trust developers--who have had to deal with
this scary "fragmentation" for years on desktop and web--to test applications
and design around it.

------
amelius
I wish I could still run the original version of Android I got when I bought
my tablet. The version I have now (and got forced upon my tablet) is much
slower and less stable.

~~~
Zigurd
Try resetting your tablet and loading only the apps you use. Slowing down as a
device ages is often to do with apps doing useless things, like loading ads
and spying on you, in the background. This gets worse as app publishers update
their apps to do ever more intrusive things in pursuit of revenue.

If that doesn't improve your life, check if there is an aftermarket
distribution, like Cyanogen, that runs on your tablet.

EDIT: You may also be able to disable built-in apps you do not use, even if
you can't uninstall them.

------
dave2000
How are they differentiating between people who don't want it and people who
bought a phone in the last couple of years and are waiting for an upgrade?

------
pedro2
I'm using a Wileyfox Swift (Aug 2015) with CyanogenOS. It is my personal
expectation it will be supported for as long as Samsung S2 (i9100) :)

------
Cypher
What about yearly Javascript?

------
smrtinsert
The author doesn't understand the concept of the support library.

------
jbb555
I'm not interested in updates because they never seem to do anything useful,
they just move everything around and make thing harder to use without adding
anything useful.

