Slashdot Mirror
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."
What would using Lollipop do for me that whatever version of Android I'm currently using not? Is there a major benefit?
Usually jump all over new ROM's, new OS updates, all part of the fun. Though... I'm still not sure about this new Material look to everything. Running on a AMOLED, and rarely go outside, I prefer the black background, holo look. So... the 'xp feel' is spot on, I'm in a good place, everything works, and it looks good.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
There is no Lollipop upgrade available for any of my devices yet.
There is... your cellphone company wont let you install it however. That needs to be addressed. Either by Google or Congress.
Part of the problem is that Lollipop offers little new, but does destroy existing functionality. Google Calendar is much less usable than before. Personal and business email is now handled by the same application, making it much more difficult to keep private and business separate. Etc..
In return, we now have fancy animations when you touch the screen, gee, golly, wow. Oh, and existing, well-known icons have been redesigned; just as an example, to go to your home screen you no longer press the house icon, now you press a circle. I'm sure some designer is real proud of that, but they must have forgotten the user-testing.
Lollipop is Google's version of Windows Vista. I'm sure they'll fix it, but in the meantime I wish I could do a rollback to KitKat...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I bought my Nexus4 specifically as it is NOT tied to a carrier.
So did many others, and it doesnt matter. As Telstra Australia users have found, if you have their sim in the phone, Telstra restricts the updates - even though the phone wasnt bought through Telstra. Want the update? Simple drop another carrier's sim in the phone (who isnt restricting it - ie any other Australian carrier), and the update is instantly available. Update - return back to your Telstra sim. (I believe Telstra has started rolling out the update recently however.)
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
I had a perfectly functional Nexus 7 before Lollipop. After the upgrade, which I performed in a trusting manner, the performance is horrible, with apps taking forever to load and some functions just gone forever. This has been by far the biggest disappointment I've had since owning Android devices.
Now I've got to figure out how to root the damn thing and either go back to KitKat or find out if I can run some custom ROM on the thing. And I hate dicking around with that kind of stuff. There was just no need for this update.
Further, the UI is much worse. The three little icons at the bottom are way too tiny for a tablet, the screen you go to in order to kill off apps that are running in the background takes forever to load and instead of a simple swipe, I have to find this little "X" in the upper right corner, like in Windows. I hate it, absolutely.
There is not one thing about Lollipop I have found that I think is an improvement in any way. Maybe it's something under the hood that's keeping me safer, but I doubt it.
Now yesterday, there was another update to Lollipop, which made a tiny improvement in the perceived speed, but it's not even close to enough to make my tablet as nice as it was just a few weeks ago. Thanks for nothing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"There is no Lollipop upgrade available for any of my devices yet."
There is no Lollipop update for almost all devices!. How the hell should anyone update.
Seriously, do the jack asses that write these articles think that you can just install whatever the heck you want like a PC? I think they have a fundamental misunderstanding of the Android ecosystem.