
Orphan Android: Top Vulnerable Smartphones 2011 - nickcobb
http://www.bit9.com/orphan-android/graphic.php
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freehunter
Android really is the new Windows Mobile. Completely open application model,
easily hackable, able to run on a wide variety of devices (and therefore
occasionally seen and sold on devices that are sub-par)[1], poor support given
by some vendors, forcing those of us who wish for more to resort to the
homebrew community for support.

The biggest accomplishment Apple made with the iPhone is forcing carriers and
"manufacturers" (Apple) to conform to a standard. Of all the things Android
has over the iPhone, I wish the quality control could be included in that.
Microsoft has show us that you can have a quality-controlled phone made by
several different manufacturers with different features and still allow for a
limited amount of freedom in the Marketplace (with their $9 jailbreak app).
WP7 is the middle OS between iOS and Android. Now I'd like to see a middle OS
between WP7 and Android. I want Android with quality and standards.

[1]([http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-
gadget-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-ever-
ars-reviews-a-99-android-tablet.ars))

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bookwormAT
There is an issue that many phone providers do not provide long term support
for their smartphones lineup. But comparing different software projects by how
they get updates makes little sense to me.

"6 month is the average lag time of Android phone manufactures after an update
has been released."

While I'm sure this is technically correct, the implication that this process
is slow, or that other operating systems are supported "faster" is far
fetched.

Because Google released the Galaxy Nexus this month, HTC will probably be 6
month "behind" in this statistic. If Google had decided to delay the Galaxy
Nexus by 6 month, HTC would be considered "on time". How can HTC's support be
in one case be faster or the other slower, if they update the device at the
same day in both cases?

So using the release date of the first Nexus Phone as the release date of a
new Android version is completly arbitrary. If the same statistic contains
data for iOS, I usually see the date that Apple rolls out its new version of
iOS to it's devices as the day that the new version is released. But Apple is
not only the first manufaturer to roll out iOS on phones, it is also the last
one. So why are we using the first manufacturer that releases a phone with a
new Android version to determine a release date, and not the last one? Or the
4th one?

Using the release of the sourcecode as a date makes sense. But then, there is
nothing comparable to an open source release in iOS or Windows Phone, right?

Then, there is the issue about what comes with a software upgrade. On iOS,
core apps like mail or the appstore are considered part of the operating
system. They get updates when a new version of the OS is released. On Android
however, most of these phones that are still on Android 2.2 get plenty of
updates for their Email/Market/Navigation/Voice apps, all the time.

There are also software updates from manufactures which do not include Android
version upgrades. Samsung does not need to wait for a new Android version to
fix a security hole, or to update one of its own applications.

Finally, it simply makes no sense in comparing how often two different
projects get an upgrade. Is Ubuntu so much more advanced than OSX? It gets an
update almost every day, and there is a major upgrade every 6 months.

Did the Nexus One only get updated for a year, while the iPhone 3G got updated
for 3 years? Or did the Nexus One got it's 3 years worth of updates all in
it's first year, because Android development was much faster than iOS
development? I think we can all agree that this is completely subjective and
highly controversial.

Please note that I don't want to make the case that Android is very well
supported by its various software providers. Long term support could be much
better for many devices. My point is that these upgrade statistics are
sensational and deeply flawed.

