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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."
What would using Lollipop do for me that whatever version of Android I'm currently using not? Is there a major benefit?
They haven't pushed the OTA upgrade to my Nexus 5 yet.
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.
Yeah that is going to work well for people who don't replace their devices every six months.
... whatever
Or maybe the phone manufacturers are being dog slow at rolling out Lollipop upgrades for their recent phones. We don't all have a Nexus.
------- Mark
My phone (Galaxy S3) doesn't support Lollipop (and it's looking like Cyanogenmod isn't going to support it either).
To be honest, my phone works "good enough" for me. I'll upgrade when it gives up the ghost.
I haven't upgraded my laptop in 8 or so years, because it works "good enough". Same goes for my DVR, even though it doesn't support HD. The only reason I got a new TV was because my old one died (that said, being able to watch YouTube and BBC iPlayer directly through the TV is brilliant).
Summation 2
My own impressions of 5.0 haven't been too good. The lockscreen doesn't give you the unlock input (eg: PIN) without pushing a button to ask for it, the animations have been stepped up -- the kinds of animations you can't turn off from the Dev menu -- and it generally looks copmletely childish. That's not what I personally want.
If you're running 4.4 check out all the new Google apps from the store. That's what you're getting from Lollipop, but also with the launcher, etc. No. No no no. I uninstalled the gmail update as fast as I could.
This is the trend in tech - things become more colourful, flat and generally dumbed down. I don't mean dumbed down from a user knowledge point of view, I mean "UI designed in MS Paint" down.
Remember how Windows XP was "good enough" that people took forever to upgrade?
No, but I do remember that Vista was found to be so wanting that many people went back to XP, and those that had waited heard the horror stories and stayed put.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Kitkat is killing Lollipop uptake the same way cars are killing rocket-car uptake.
There is no Lollipop upgrade available for any of my devices yet.
Apart from Apple fanboys, I don't think anybody is stupid enough to buy a new device just to get a software upgrade.
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Given http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/14/06/11/1747251/new-permission-system-could-make-android-much-less-secure wouldn't the answer be that poeple do not want to upgrade?
Even when they make the upgrade available for my device (planned in march I heard) I won't upgrade untill the XPosed framework is properly functioning on Android 5. And I want to be sure it's rootable. XPosed (with XPrivacy) is too important for me, and indeed 4.4 is running goog enough. I don't care about the new look.
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.
Didn't they make the same claim in the past only to leave customers with certain phones behind? Why believe them this time?
MS can say all they want but their past behavior tells us their mobile OS updates are slow to come and they are still playing catch up on features.
It would probably be more realistic if vendors and carriers guaranteed all OS updates the first year after a phone is released and after that just security updates until the phone is no longer sold.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Whoever wrote this piece doesn't have a clue about how Android upgrades actually happen, or thinks everybody buys an unlocked Nexus phone straight from Google. Please go and investigate about how carriers need to certify each upgrade and how also Google has to re-certify them to make sure carriers don't put too much bloatware in them (or at least that's what we've been told). I have a carrier Moto G 2014 and I'm still waiting for the Lollipop rollout. In fact, most of the people lurking in the top Android related sites are in my exact situation, and complaining about it.
Regarding the slowness in Nexus devices after the upgrade, just disable the full device encryption and you'll have similar performance to KK.
The easiest way to guarantee that is NOT to provide any updates after launch and instead of "upgrades" start completly new lines of mobile OS. Remember? Windows CE, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile.... I have a GPS with CE lying in a drawer somewhere. It STILL has the most recent version of WinCE.
bickerdyke
One man's fragmetation is another man's product differentiation/branding
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
I switched to WP and hated it..
The apps either didn't exist or were featureless, including Microsoft's own ones. Needless to say, I was happy to go back to Android
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.
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 went Android with my first smartphone in 2012 (McClane: "Welcome to the party pal!") and I never looked back. But as my family joined me on my plan, including my parents for a total of 6 phones, two wound up being Nokia 521s. One was my son's. He's a self-taught tablet jailbreaker and he only grabbed WP cos it was on sale and his hand-me-down starter Android phone was a pig of a thing. He liked WP well enough but, like others have mentioned, bemoaned the poor app support and went back to Android once he saved up enough for a proper device.
The other Lumia WP went to my Dad, later to the smartphone party than I was. As an intro phone, for a non-geek, it was perfect. It did everything he needed it to (GPS, news, basic camera) and the Tiles interface was easy enough for him to understand and customize to his liking. Ultimately though, he and my mom grabbed a pair of LG Optimus L90s for $100 each out the door and both are very pleased.
Apple and Windows never appealed to me personally because of their locked-down nature and my need to customize my UI to within an inch of its life. But I respect what both competitors have done with their OSes.
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
I'm seriously considering it...
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.
Google have a long history of pushing out random, increasingly cryptic and frequently totally pointless changes to all their apss and services.
Lollipop is looking very like their Win8 moment, a UI that takes away more than the under the hood improvements give. Did they not notice the kickback against both Win8 Metro and Jonny Ives eye blistering IOS flattening? Don't know why I asked, they do whatever they want without checking what users think every damn time and this time it's repeating the same mistakes as their rivals.
I'm beginning to think that Android has a real fragmentation problem.
I don't know if you're deliberately taking the piss... you do know people have been saying this for years?
Still, no matter how much it is said it remains to be proved that this is an actual problem rather than an imagined one.
It would be best if Google focuses on offering a top-notch Android experience and - at the same time - alow for Geeks to fiddle with their devices, root them and such.
If Google implements a fixed release cylce and does end-user marketing whilst catering to the geek crows (opinion leaders) at the same time, then they can leapfrog the vendors messing with their own versions of android and allow for more seamless updates. In fact, I think they should offer customisation services for every vendor who want's their own visuals in the launcher and specifically support vendors who stick as close as possible to the mint Android experience.
So this is pretty much what they do do. That freedom to allow 'geeks' to fiddle with their devices is the same freedom the vendors use to customise (and occasionally improve) the experience.
Whatever they do, they have to put some effort into curbing fragmentation, because that's the number 1 thing that bugs Androids attractiveness.
(a) nothing you have suggested helps, you lose the ability to amend the system then you lose the freedom of the system.
(b) perhaps for you, but I doubt most people buying phones are that bothered about upgrades. The missteps that Apple and Google have made in upgrades recently have actually made people not want upgrades. ie, I like the device I bought, please don't change it.
Likewise, if Apple sticks to they minimised choices and manageble line of systems and devices, they'll continue to have the edge in that department and maintain their market, no matter how powerful Google gets in the low- and midrange global markets.
My 2 cents.
The idea that Apple owns the high-end and Android is only mid and low end is hopelessly out-of-date. Perhaps in the US, but the rest of the world Android sits at around 80% share and that is not just mid and low end devices.
"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.
I'd agree with your second point, but not the first. I really like Windows Phone's UI and structure, but it lacks several important bits of core functionality and (more importantly) lacks third-party apps to fill in the gaps. If Microsoft had managed to get developer mindshare earlier (not helped by breaking all existing Windows mobile apps), they'd be in a much better position.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
I think it would need to be over two years, which is generally the amount of time anyone might be expected to hold onto a phone that was sold to them. There really ought to be some more responsibility and/or accountability on the part of the carriers to support devices that know full well people will be more or less forced to carry for the next two years.
Which isn't to say that every phone within the last two years needs to get 5.0, but they should continue to receive updates and support as problems arise. My original Galaxy S (Epic on Sprint) had zero support on day one, but i think that was less about the phone and more about Sprint just sucking at knowing what to do with the recent Android explosion. Either way I still find that carriers and manufacturers all suck butt when it comes to phone support and I'll likely never buy a non-Google phone again. If they stop making them, I may just go to Windows.
Closer to the topic, I think most people who keep their eyes on the mobile industry know EXACTLY why adoption of 5.0 isn't happening. Only the Nexus line is getting the upgrade, and the upgrade runs like shit (and the G3 apparently has it). I own a Nexus 5 and 10. The 10 chokes to death on 5.0, so I leave it on 4.4.4*. My Nexus 5 had awful battery life, and busted wifi on 5.0, so I reverted to 4.4.2. Then when 5.0.1 came out I heard that wifi and battery life weren't so much of an issue. I installed the update and am pretty happy with it so far. I thought about grabbing a Nexus 6, but since they're impossible to buy unlocked without a great deal of effort and scripting I just DGAF.
So I don't know why anybody is remotely surprised by the low adoption rate.
*Some of the games I like to play just won't run on any version of Lollipop. I don't know if this is a Dalvik/ART thing or not, but the Nexus 10 just doesn't have the power for modern applications anymore, and I'll replace it within a year or so if some really great stuff comes out.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I've observed the following on my wife's Windows phone:
- The Line app doesn't do emote pop-ups like it does on my Android phone. If you want to use emotes, you have to look them up manually
- Her phone lacks turn-by-turn navigation, and won't narrate directions. It's useless as a car navigation device for those reasons.
- As far as I'm aware, Tubecast is the only Windows app that'll stream to Chromecast, and I think it's Youtube-only
- Daily reminders to reboot the phone, with the statement that they don't recommend continuing to operate the phone without restarts
- All the games advertised on TV: No Windows Phone version.
- No emulators
- No on-device scripting environments
- No on-device command-line
- I like having my ssh +ftp clients+servers available on my phone, because they're easier than connecting a cable
- No Dropbox app
I am overjoyed that you don't care about any of the things I've listed...but I do. Most of the items aren't critical requirements on their own, but the combination of all of them together means that using a Windows Phone would be a serious reduction in what my phone could do, for me.
My certainty is that the Windows app store lacks most of the software that I want.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.