and then you have tons of device who cannot upgrade to 4.4

krisgenre · on Jan 16, 2015

Its the manufacturer's (HTC, Samsung ..) fault that they cannot be updated.

guardian5x · on Jan 16, 2015

And Google, because they have not implemented a default update system for the android core. Google only updates Apps.

SEMW · on Jan 16, 2015

I'm honestly not sure what you're talking about. Android does have a system update mechanism. You go to settings -> About phone -> System updates.

If manufacturers / carriers change that to check for updates on their own servers, rather than google's - which they can do since Android is open-source, and so they all do - then that's how the system update mechanism will work.

I don't follow what you're suggesting google could do about that, apart from moving more and more OS functions out of the core OS and into google play services. Which is exactly what they've been doing.

mahouse · on Jan 16, 2015

Starting with Android 5, WebCore is part of the Google Services and is therefore updated silently through the Play Store.

But I obviously do not approve what the OEMs are doing.

dublinben · on Jan 16, 2015

>Google Services

Aka, no longer part of Android. The millions of users without Google Play will have an even less functional OS than they used to, all in the name of greater control by Google.