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Android updates are getting slower and slower, despite Google's best efforts (unlikekinds.com)
143 points by whalabi on April 25, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 156 comments



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.


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/

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


> ML adaptive battery

That sounds like a gimmick.

> App actions (ML predictive app shortcuts)

More stuff I don't want. I don't want "predictive" app shortcuts. I want shorts that I specify. I want to control which shortcuts are shown and in what order. I don't want anyone (developer, carrier, whoever) to see what shortcuts I've selected, used, or how often.

> Digital well-being dashboard and limits

This sounds like stuff that should have been in the first release.

> A lot more

I don't see any improvements here whatsoever. All of this is the wheel which should have been shipped with my phone is being reinvented.

> interface improvements

"Improvements" is a buzzword for "let's change everything and give it a facelift and make all of our users waste time relearning how to use their device". No thanks. Actually, not even thanks. Just no.

Edit: Dear Me: less swearing plzkthx


> "Improvements" is a buzzword for "let's change everything and give it a facelift and make all of our users waste time relearning how to use their device". No thanks. Actually, not even thanks. Just no.

Which can be a traumatic experience for non-technical people, like my mother or my niece, the end result being them learning to automatically refusing any kind of update, out of fear of change.

I really don't get this unhealthy obsession of the tech industry wit change for change sake, what most people want and need, is stability, so they can take of their lives.


By that argument shouldn't you be using Android 1.0?

Or a 90s Nokia?


You have no idea how much I miss my N95...


> * 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.


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


> 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...

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


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.


> 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.


Android is designed so that users never "close" an app (there's no close button); instead, they switch between apps. The system closes apps in the background when necessary to free memory, but all apps are supposed to save and restore their state so that the user is presented with the illusion that the app never stopped running.


This is untrue. You can close an app manually by pressing the bottom right software button, which shows your foreground apps, and then swiping the app window off the screen.

The state is lost and, for most apps, background processes are killed.


> No AI needed for that.

These days, I'm beginning to wonder if it's even possible for a company to alphabetize without ML.


Languages sometimes have different sort order, even when they use the same script. So I could see using ML to detect the language, in order to select the proper sort order.


Including merging in name in different languages and scripts... And trying to figure out whether the user really wanted an English interface when they set up the phone, or just had prior bad experience with poor localizations...


Isn't the language a setting in the OS somewhere? I don't think you need any ML to figure out what language a user's phone is currently using.


Adaptive battery works extremely well. The ML-side might be a slight in-vogue thing, but as long as it works I don't really care how it works (and it does work).

I have no opinion on App Actions/Digital Web-Being.


> Digital well-being dashboard and limits

Whenever a for-profit company introduces a new feature, one must ask himself, what is the business case for it.

Personally, I see this feature as a way for Google to legally track which apps people use, and how often. Essentially, it does for Google what Onavo VPN did for Facebook.

From the data collection point of view, whoever came up with this idea at Google must have been worth a promotion. Especially, after GDPR came into force.


They can and do already track your app usage (you can see this if you check your usage history on the Google data dashboards).

This specific change is pretty much just a good thing, unless you want to get meta-cynical.


> They can and do already track your app usage (you can see this if you check your usage history on the Google data dashboards).

Is my Android data usage by app stored somewhere online by default? I thought the stats are only kept locally at the OS level, and are not connected to my Google Account.

In any case, "Digital well-being" seems to be about tracking screen time, not data usage. And as far as I understand, it sends that data back to Google.


Sign into your google store account on another device with a web browser, it gives you full information about what apps you have installed, how long you have used them, and even the ability to install apps remotely (!).


This is a normal functionality of every app store: keeping track of what and when was installed.

But as far as I am aware, Google Play doesn't collect data about the actual usage of each app in terms of screen time.

That's where "Digital well-being" fills the gap for Google.


I have android 9 and frankly its not that special. Google is just scraping the barrel to find new things to put in their updates. Oh look another redesign!


You could say the same thing about iOS and browser technologies. Every iOS device is 5 years behind in web standards support. Every Android device has access to the latest Chrome or Firefox.


I would love to update my Nexus 5X to Pie but Google is not giving me this opportunity. How is this my fault?


Downside of updating support libraries independently is that it balloons the QA matrix and makes integration bugs inevitable. The iOS approach means the entire OS is properly tested as an entire entity.


There are definitely some very big upsides to being able to move your entire user base to a new major OS version in a year. Apple benefits a lot from this and Google and the vendors and carriers need to somehow get their heads together and deal with this because it is a serious issue.

I just wanted to point out that there are some good things about a more decoupled model too.


I would think two of the richest companies in the world could figure out how to manage that sort of complexity. Maybe they need to poach a few people from Microsoft to learn how it's done.


> Maybe they need to poach a few people from Microsoft to learn how it's done.

It seems Microsoft needs some help in this department as well https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/4500988/windows-upd...


So you're telling me an OS with 1.2+ billion users has bugs? I'm shocked! :)

On a more serious note, Microsoft is (was?) famous for its QA processes. They have (had?) huge computer farms, tens of thousands of machine to be able to QA with every strange configuration out there. Windows, despite the hate it gets, is one of the most QAd pieces of software out there.

And considering the shoddy architecture it has to support for backwards compatibility (CP/M, MS-DOS, Win32), it works amazingly well.


My impression was that they have changed the way potential releases are tested internally https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/23/microsoft_windows_1... The last update was blocked since files were being deleted in users' Document directories and now this external drive issue. Both cases involve some fairly common configurations.


Yea, I always wondered about the (frankly amazing) backwards compatibility. Windows could probably be a much better system if they just get rid of support for these old systems. Same for these super old MS-Word formats. Doesn't need to be as drastic as Apple does it, though.


The super old MS Word formats are just a memory dump of internal data structures. The Modern DOCX just converts XML into that same representation along with whatever new features have been added. There is little reason to remove the old format when it is still very much an integral part of Word internals.


To add to this, I have a 6 year old iPad. There are no issues with it except the operating system itself. Hulu won't install since it needs iOS 11 for some reason. iOS won't update to 11 because it's too old. Netflix works and updates just fine.

The iPad is in perfect condition with no hardware issues. It's the software that will make it an ewaste soon.

My Android phone updates all the apps (even many OS services) without any problem.


Have you ever downloaded Hulu with your account? If so, it should let you download the “last compatible version”. It worked a few months ago for me on my old first gen iPad.

If you haven’t downloaded it before, you can download it with an older version of iTunes or a newer device if you have one and then it will let you download on your old device.


>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.

I don't know about the rate and speed of support library from the Top 5 Android manufacturers, which is Samsung, Huawei, BBKs, Xiaomi. I know they do get some regular update, but on all devices? And do those user actually update it?

iOS Users Update are on a much faster cycle. iOS 12 is on 70% of compatible iOS devices within 3 months of release. iOS 11+ on 95% of all compatible iOS devices. That is pretty damn crazy if you ask me Having OS that is only 2 years old on nearly all devices.


The support library is something that is statically compiled inside of Android apps. That's the reason why it exists - to circumvent the usual Android OS update process to bring new APIs to developers faster.


ARH, sorry I have close to zero experience on Android Development. Thank You for pointing out.


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.


In many ways that's a good indication that the software is maturing. Every phone update shouldn't come with a bunch of dread around new user flows.

Though they did generally manage to entirely screw up do-not-disturb and notification settings in a gross attempt at simplification...


> 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.


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?


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.


The inability for Android manufacturers to deliver an honest, timely and up to date practice of current security updates (instead of 6 month old fixes) pushed me to a pixel when I was happy with my galaxy note and g6.

The heartbleed bug remaining unpatched for so long really did it for me.


> I lost the ability to record calls

Is this applicable to all Pie phones or just your particular one? I wonder why did they do it.



What an outrage!


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...


I recently swapped to iPhone after being a long time Android user. After using the iPhone for a few months now, I will definitely be going back to Android. Before I owned an Apple device, I was sure that iPhones got first class treatment in app design/development - this has been a resounding disappointment. Instead, there are a few good apps but most of them are just enough to be good enough and not really amazing. Not to mention Apple's total lack of inter-app communication (iOS's default clock app is not good enough, I installed Alarmy so I can skip the next alarm if I wake up early, Alarmy needs to run in the foreground, won't let me access it in lock screen, and if your kid locks your phone out while the alarm is going, gotta wait the full 5 minutes before you can stop it. Personal anecdotes, but little things like this make me wonder why people like iOS so much when it's so limiting.


For a while, the restrictions were justifiable because "Apple wants to do it right." And I thought some of the features they brought to market later seemed nicely done. The problem is that Apple applies the 90% rule in deciding if lifting a restriction is justified, but I found myself in that 10% enough that I finally switched last year. There are some things I miss from iOS, but not much.


What do you miss on iOS? I am using it now and feel like I miss almost everything from Android. I like the iPhone's amazing speed and quality, but I miss finger print (yes, I know less secure but any less secure than a face scan?), apps communicating with each other, separate identities/work profiles. Apps that cost < $10.


(Fwiw, lots of Android phones (like my moto) have finger print unlock.)


My apps only update when I connect the charger during the evening. At least I have been under that impression. (Except for Facebook that updates itself outside the play store and then brags about it with an annoying notification..) Is it something that varies between models/makers?


They still crash the foreground app you actively using while it updates


You can set apps to only update when you tell it to, and then use Tasker to update when charging.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/al2gd4/android_9_in...


Tasker's OS hooks have a negative impact on battery life.


Do you mean they damage the battery? I'm not sure that's true.


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?)


Being able to change the default apps and layout the home screen any way I like, including using a completely new launcher, are big pluses for me. Being able to drag and drop music and files directly onto my device is another. Running real Firefox and not a Safari wrapper is a big deal too IMO.

I also find Android notifications and the Google keyboard way more ergonomic than on iOS and third party keyboard support on iOS is still pretty buggy.

But the real kicker is being able to side load apps when necessary. I didn't like the idea of giving Apple complete control over what I can run on my phone when they first announced the App Store and I still don't like it and consider it a serious threat to the future of general purpose computing.


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.


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.


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


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.


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


Lack of notification. So you end up with a giant folder with a single "NEW NOTIFICATION" star above it. Then you have to open it and scroll through the limited 3 x 3 view.


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


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.


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.


Folder in folders are not supported, except via strange glitches.


You can delete the vast majority of the base apps on modern releases.


”have to hide apps I don't care about in folders.”

Almost all apps can be deleted now days on iOS, including most of Apple’s stock apps. The only exceptions are a few core system apps, like Settings and App Store.


It’s not about deleting. It’s about having them on the desktop. On Android you have a drawer for all apps and only the ones you use often on the desktop. In iOS everything is on the desktop. In android I also can have the same app in two different folders which is quite useful.


You can delete most apple apps now.


Alt launchers are cool but Android doesn't give them full support for widgets.

Accessibility still matters even if you aren't blind, and apps for blind users can still be malicious.

Android has been steadily removing user control features to be more locked down like iOS but without privacy controls.


Apps for blind people could still be malicious, but that’s not a reason to justify random bullshit apps claiming accessibility permissions.

A real address book app could still harvest your contact data and sell it for marketing purposes, but if google cracks down and says “Hey flashlight apps, you aren’t allowed to scrape Contacts information anymore” that would be entirely reasonable.

Abuse of android’s accessibility services is particularly dangerous, hence the push for tighter controls on who can use it.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-android-banking-malware-s...


I'm at a buddies house and need to transfer a file. I can boot up a simple HTTP server with /Download mounted.

I can connect to my ps4 controller through Bluetooth

Tasker

I can inject a payload into my switch over usb-c

I can literally run Linux (and do all the time) using a 20 dollar hdmi adapter


Which Linux programs do you use that benefit from being on your phone when you have a monitor but no computer?


Some things that come to mind : You can replace the launcher. You have a real file system. You can side load apps. Apps can do background operations.


Loading apps outside the appstore/playstore is the best android feature


I don't see an option for this but my Pixel 2 starts automatic updates only when charging. When not plugged in, it checks for updates and provides a notification 'N updates available' but it doesn't auto-update.


> 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.


> What advancements?

Security?


You can fix security bugs without forcing your users to upgrade entire OS.


?

Security on even older phones is so good most non-tech oriented people think that phone viruses are a myth


That's not really true. There are regular browser vulnerabilities, for example.


On Android, browsers are updated separately, outside the OS update cycle. The Android users have the current Chrome, Firefox or whatever they are using, without regard to their OS version.


I don't doubt that there are many vulnerabilities. However, public perception so far is that it doesn't matter, as little in terms of major viruses have actually happened.


Security updates should be independent of all the other crap they lump in with them.


Android fixed the totally messed up Battery Saver in O->P

and added Night Light to compensate for breaking Twilight/BlueLight etc.


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.


> 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 ?


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.


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


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.


Kudos to Apple for that.


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


Apple’s m.o. early on was a take it or leave approach with the carriers. Usually the largest carrier in a market would refuse their demands but a smaller carrier would acquiesce. Then the larger carrier would start losing customers since they didn’t have the iPhone and they would come to the table.


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


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.


Most people get their phones from carriers.


Why would you want to buy a device from a carrier ? Just buy a phone from wherever and pop in a SIM.


In the US sure, here phones have always been unlocked.


That and that carrier logo in the status bar, yes? I mean why else would AT&T get to display fake 5G up there now?

Edit: Name, not logo


That always had the carrier name (it's associated with the MCC/MNC IDs). I don't recall logos, but it's likely that they would follow suit some day, and AT&T has a very long history with Apple, so...


Dumb pipes. They fear becoming a dumb pipe. They will get their hands into anything and everything simply to make sure they're not just a dumb pipe.


Dumb pipe ~= Commoditized complement

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047348


Carrier is involved only if the carrier "manufactured" and sold you the device. Your choice.

This is why Android moved as much as possible to the core Google Play services app instead of the OS.


It's planned obsolescence.


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


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.


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


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.


Wouldn't that be up to the device manufacturer and in the case of the app themselves, the app devs? Samsung has TouchWiz and LG has (I think it's called) Home. There are 3rd party launchers available to download that will use a smaller footprint.

I had an older HTC phone that was great for dev testing perf on lower end devices. It had a terrible memory leak that caused the phone to run slower overall, and you had to make numerous tweaks to fix it. One of them was to replace the default launcher. It made an immediate difference.

Although I do concede that Google's apps are terrible for lower end devices.


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.


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).


> 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?


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.


More bloat than the old hardware cam handle.


I suspect a lot of it is people keeping phones longer too.

Hypothetically old phones could get updates... but it doesn't work that way, does it?


Old phones don't make manufacturers money. I think it would be interesting to try and decouple the OS from the hardware in the same way Windows has been decoupled from computer manufacturing.

Let the manufacturers do what they do best (make slick hardware) and let the OS developers do what they do (make slick OSs).

As it stands now, every phone maker has their own flavor of Android, and updates for proprietary stuff doesn't make sense to companies that make money from new phones.


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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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.)


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


As long as OEMs can customize the OS, upgrades will suck. OEMs have proven time and time again they do not care about upgrades.


Doesn’t Android already support OTA upgrades?


Google can't make it happen unilaterally other than the Pixel phones. Without both the carrier and the handset maker putting work into the upgrade it won't happen. And the handset makers like Samsung don't want to cannibalize sales or spend resources allowing us to upgrade our Galaxy S5 handsets to Android P and Q.


Don't forget Android One which is a pretty decent initiative. My updates happen within ~30 days

https://android.com/one


Why though? If I run Windows on a Lenovo laptop, Lenovo doesn't have to vet the updates first... What are the carriers actually doing that safety updates or other GUI-related updates can't be just "added".


Actively blocking updates because they can sell more phones or they can just save money by avoiding absolutely all the hassles from updates (they don't care about security issues, they'll just blame Google).


Or they should go the "Windows way" with Android 10. Make it the last Android version forever and add security updates and features with small digestable patches.


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

iOS gets that in a few hours.


OEMs + carriers.


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.


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.


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!


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).


> 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...)

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


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.


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


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


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)



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. #$&@!


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.


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.


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.


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.


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


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.


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.


This is called a "technical debt". :)




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