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Is Kitkat Killing Lollipop Uptake?
BarbaraHudson writes Remember how Windows XP was "good enough" that people took forever to upgrade? The same might be happening with Kitkat vs Lollipop. "According to Google's latest Google Play Store results for early January 2015, less than 0.1 percent of all Android devices were using Lollipop. By comparison, the last major Android release 4.4, KitKat, reached 1.1 percent of its audience in its first month out. In January 2015, almost two months in for Lollipop, KitKat is still number one with 39.1 percent of the market. It's followed by the various Jelly Bean versions, 4.1.x with 19.2 percent; 4.2.x with 20.3 percent, and 4.3 with 6.5 percent. Trailing them is Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.03-04 with 7.8 percent, followed by antique Froyo, 2.2, with 0.4 percent."
They haven't pushed the OTA upgrade to my Nexus 5 yet.
It will display your alarm clock in beautiful blue and hot pink, colors not user-changeable, of course. How could you not upgrade?
I have a nexus and im still waiting for my update
I don't think the comparison holds up well, because in the case of XP users had control of the upgrade while in the case of phones it's usually the handset maker and to a lesser extent the carrier in charge. Adoption of Lollipop is mainly a function of how many handset models ship with it installed and how quickly people are upgrading to newer models of phones. Most of the flagship models are shipping with some flavor of 4.2 or 4.4 on them, and enough people seem to have bought those models in the last year that it'll probably be summer at the earliest before we see the next cycle of upgrades start in earnest. The only way we'll see Lollipop uptake pick up faster than that is if Google manages to convince the handset makers to roll 5.0 out to phones like the Galaxy S4. It'd also help if carriers stopped insisting on different "models" where the difference is strictly in branding and the actual phone hardware is identical.
It's been fine on my 5. I don't think I've had a crash in Chrome yet and it seems just as quick as Kitkat was. Do you have any background apps that might not be totally compatible? All of my apps seem to work, but I have heard that some are flaky Lollipop (probably down to the switch from Dalvik to Art).
I was hoping to like the new lock screen notifications, but there's not enough flexibility in how they work. I'd like to see per app settings that hide them from the lock screen but not the notification bar. The options seem to be all or nothing, so I went back to the lock screen notification app I was using under Kitkat anyway.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
No benefits so far, only cons, at least on Nexus 5.
1. The new UI sucks ass, it seems that Google has forgotten that the devices do have more than two color displays. Why don't you allow user to change the color scheme?
2. Simple things such as (un)muting the ring tone, which previously was easy via power button, is now a long operation with volume button presses, which usually takes multiple retries to succeed. Usually only the phone volume is changed, and eventually some of the presses actually changes the ringtone volume.
3. The gallery application is also now ruined, as it forces the user to accept G+ account, or he can not access his pictures anymore. Way to go Google, taking pictures as hostages really makes the G+ positively accepted.
4. When battery gets below 15%, the system starts nagging via notifications, making noises, and bugging the user, even if the device still has hours and hours of standby time left. Why not complain once and let the user connect charger when he prefers?
5. Since the ART runtime is now the only option available, application development by on device debugging is completely useless, as it is unbearably slow. Even opening application may take a minute.
People have to wait for their vendor or carrier to release an update, or use an alternative ROM like Cyanogenmod. In the case of the latter, Cyanogenmod only started releasing official nightlies for a limited range of devices 2 days ago. Prior to that, it has been a case of scouring forums to obtain unofficial releases of alternative ROMs.
Even after the upgrade has been released, people actually need a chance to perform the update. For some people, that may be several months down the road -- e.g. when they know that they'll have a chance to perform the update and get used to the changes. It isn't a matter of being good enough. It is a matter of giving people an opportunity to perform the upgrade.
It does. Either Anand or Ars, I can't recall, tested 5.0 on a Nexus 5, with encouraging results. So I upgraded, and found out the worst bugs were related to power management. While the number of wakelocks seems to have been reduced - props to Google for that -, my Nexus 4 just refused to sleep while plugged in, which meant longer charging periods when plugged to the wall and heavy discharging when plugged to a 0.5A USB port. As the only way to charge whilst in the car is via USB, I was very dissatisfied. Also, the new battery monitor is a major regression both in the way that it represents drain per app and on bugs. Wifi is listed as being always on, for instance. Add to that the unpleasant extra steps to unlock your device, such as having to swipe up to then enter the unlock pattern. Very annoying when it's an extra step that serves no practical purpose, especially considering how many times we tend to reach into our pockets to use smartphones nowadays. So, while Lollipop is indeed prettier, the major, showstopper charge bug and questionable UI deisgn choices made me revert to KitKat.
You're hating on "stupid" Apple users, but they're the ones who are guaranteed to be getting the updates in the first place. All my several years old iOS devices run iOS 8 no problem. I guess wanting good quality devices that get updates makes us stupid!
For what it's worth, I have an android phone too. The battery life is laughable, even with 3rd party ROMs (which is the *only* way to get updates for it). Android is why I don't mind paying more for better products.
You can root it and run this https://play.google.com/store/....
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Apple is in the same boat, but the new "superflat" UIs that are the current fad are horrible. It's rarely intuitive how anything works or what is or is not an interface element. I get that UI developers think buttons, switches, and sliders are ugly, but if you remove all of them it's really hard to use the device. People still aren't trained to swipe randomly all over the screen to try to figure out what mystery gesture does what, they just think the features are removed. Heaven forbid the UI tell you what gestures are available too, that would be cheating. Phones should be like puzzle boxes apparently.
I read the internet for the articles.