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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."
It will display your alarm clock in beautiful blue and hot pink, colors not user-changeable, of course. How could you not upgrade?
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
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
Ironically, Apple fanboys don't have to buy a new device just to get a software upgrade.
Apart from Apple fanboys, I don't think anybody is stupid enough to buy a new device just to get a software upgrade.
Then you are in denial, naive or just plain stupid. I work at a phone company that also happens to sell mobile phones, I assure you, plenty of people say they would buy a new phone just for a new version of the OS.
The real question is WHY SHOULD I UPGRADE to the next version. Apple spews new features all over in press info and even TV commercials. You don't have to go looking for it, they tell you.
Android on the other hand uses silly code names so it takes normal (i.e. non-fanboys) a long time before they even know WTF lollipop is, and the real kicker is ... unless you go digging, no one anywhere has given any reason WHY you would want to bother upgrading. The people rushing to upgrade to lollipop are the same ones that run beta OS releases, and thats why it has an non-existent user base. No one else cares.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager