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Google Can't Ignore the Android Update Problem Any Longer
An anonymous reader writes: An editorial at Tom's Hardware makes the case that Google's Android fragmentation problem has gotten too big to ignore any longer. Android 5.0 Lollipop and its successor 5.1 have seen very low adoption rates — 9.0% and 0.7% respectively. Almost 40% of users are still on KitKat. 6% lag far behind on Gingerbread and Froyo. The article points out that even Microsoft is now making efforts to both streamline Windows upgrades and adapt Android (and iOS) apps to run on Windows.
If Google doesn't adapt, "it risks having users (slowly but surely) switch to more secure platforms that do give them updates in a timely manner. And if users want those platforms, OEMs will have no choice but to switch to them too, leaving Google with less and less Android adoption." The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.
If Google doesn't adapt, "it risks having users (slowly but surely) switch to more secure platforms that do give them updates in a timely manner. And if users want those platforms, OEMs will have no choice but to switch to them too, leaving Google with less and less Android adoption." The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.
But the doom-saying is inappropriate:
FTA: "Otherwise, it risks having users (slowly but surely) switch to more secure platforms that do give them updates in a timely manner."
Among the problems with this conclusion, the most egregious seems to be: Android is used in a way that Windows and IOS are not. People use it for lower-grade hardware that they are still manufacturing today. Go buy a $39 "unlocked" phone at your local Fry's (search for a brand like Blu). What will it be running? Android 2.3. Which is wonderful. They are calling this "fragmentation," but it's really people who could never spend the money for a $400 dollar phone finally getting access to one to what was a $400 phone 5 years ago. It can't run the latest O/S, but that's fine. The 2.x series phones (like my beloved Motorola Cliq) were really quite functional.
Dear Lucian (article author): Not everyone in the world is rich. That does not mean there is a "critical problem" that Google needs to address.
Yes. It would be great if Android kept major version trees alive and patched, like we do with the Linux kernel, and if all the manufacturers built their their complete phone stack from Puppet scripts, so they could get an Android update, rebuild against it, retest against real hardware and reissue the complete O/S for scant money in a few days.
They don't. If you want to make this happen it won't come from Google. It will come from us, the consumers walking into [insert generic carrier name] and asking which phone manufacturer got the greatest number of updates, after launch, for their top end phone. If the number is 3 refuse to buy from them.
When the stores know that is a selling point, they'll push back. Right now the people in that store and the manufacturer benefit most by selling you a new phone as soon as the old one is paid off. Until we change that evolutionary pressure, they will remain correctly adapted to our behaviour.
Nah. Your typical user doesn't give a shit as long as they can make phone calls and open Facebook.
Seriously. This is the only sentence in TFS that matters:
The author also says OEMs and carriers can no longer be trusted to handle operating system updates, because they've proven themselves quite incapable of doing so in a reasonable manner.
This has nothing to do with Google. Maybe Google is at fault for not making updates mandatory, but that would have been a completely different set of issues.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
> Technically 5.1 is out and there's supposed to be an update coming for my Moto G, but it hasn't arrived yet. Arguably this is Moto's fault more than Google's.
And that's a serious problem.
When there's a new version of iOS, I get it the day it's released.
When there's a new version of Windows, I get it the day it's released.
When there's a new version of Ubuntu, I get it the day it's released.
When there's a new version of Android, I get it when I buy a new phone.
Which OS has the problem?
Yes, it is Google's fault. My Nexus 7 2013 got 5.0 OTA three months after it's release. That's the *Google branded* device. And it was buggy.
5.1 came much faster - took a few weeks, and it's much better.
When iOS 8 was released, it was available on our iPad Air the next day.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
This seems to be more a carrier problem than a Google or manufacturer problem. Google has the base OS updates available quickly. The manufacturers have to handle the hardware-related stuff, making sure firmware blobs for their hardware are compatible and such, but that doesn't seem to be that hard a problem what with a lot of phones sharing common hardware. I've commonly seen LG and Samsung have updates available within a week or two. The big delay always seems to be my carrier not letting my phone update because they haven't finished doing all the modifications they do for locked built-in apps, custom apps (eg. LG uses a custom calendar app instead of plain Google Calendar), UI customization/branding and so on.
It seems remarkable similar to Internet access, where ISPs always want to sell you not just Internet access but a whole wrapped-up package that includes them controlling what content you get and how you get it so they can steer you to content they control or get paid for. And as with net neutrality, the cel-phone carriers are going to strongly resist being relegated to the role of mere sellers of a pipe without any control over the device and the "user experience" that goes with it and allows them to steer users towards stuff the carrier gets paid for.
This shit is why I wont buy anything other than a Nexus.
Also other manufacturers like to make a total mess of the android UI
This is what I'd expect. When you've got idiotic names Lollipop, KitKat, Gingerbread, and Froyo associated with your releases, it's a sign you shouldn't be taken seriously since you can't take your releases seriously. Next release name ideas for google: AnalGape, Smegma, Dysentery, and WeAreABunchOfMorons.
Back in the Android 1.x and 2.x days, I agreed that updates were important. Every new release brang new essential features such as Exchange support, multi-touch display, WiFi thetering, front camera, etc.
But since Android 4.x, I can't think of a major OS feature that changed the way I use my phone and what I can do with it.
Smartphones do not improve at the same speed as 5 years ago. Buying a smartphone now, and being stuck on the same OS for 2-3 years before replacing it for a new one, isn't as bad as it once was.
Geeks will still prefer Nexus phones and updates, but for the average Joe, updates can be a nuisance as it can make their stuff no longer working.
I still think devices should be updated, at least for security reasons (even though most cell phones are behind giants NATs), but I understand that the average Joe doesn't see the benefit and therefore will continue to buy phones that will never be updated.
When was the last security update released for Windows 7 ?
Answer: last tuesday.
When was the last security update released for Android 2.2.3 ?
-- Julien Pierre http://www.madbrain.com/blog
My Xperia Z2 is now a year old. It runs better than it did when I first bought it. It runs almost all Android apps without issue. I pretty much only charge it when I notice it running low -- I can't remember the last time it died overnight. The battery lasts at least 48 hours even with regular use. In an hour on the charger it is almost back to full charge. I've never had any kind of security issue, and if I lose it or it gets stolen, it is a brick to whomever ends up with it.
For the life of me, I don't see the advantage of your Blackberry over my existing Android device.
But Apple does at least have a fairly dependable support schedule: The most recent 2 generations of devices in a line are supported, possibly with some loss of functionality. (Typically functionality that depends on new hardware.) Past that is occasionally supported, but don't count on it. (Admittedly this support schedule is not official - it's just what has happened in practice for the life of iOS.)
Your iPhone 4 just misses that cut (6 is the current, 5s one gen back, 5 is two), and your iPad is about 4 generations past that cut. Each did get updates regularly during it's product life cycle - it's just that you've continued to use them past that life cycle. That contrasts dramatically with Android OS phones which often ship with out of date versions of their software, and are usually never updated.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
After a career of working on Linux OS development, from embedded to cloud I decided to give Android a try. I recently started at a company where my task was to bring up Android on a new hardware platform. One of the first things I learned is that the hardware manufacture has to get their source code for Android from their SoC provided. If you go with AOSP they refuse to support you in any way if you have issues with their drivers. They do incredible hacks to get their hardware working. As someone who has submitted patches to the mainline Linux kernel I die a little inside every time I see what they do to it. Their own section for thier own hardware. No integration into the mainline kernel and I won't even begin to speak of the code quality. Google themselves force you to use an Androidized kernel with specific patches from them. There is a project to mainline these but Google has been resistant to working with the mainline kernel guys in changing things. One of the things I really don't understand is why Google had to throw everything out thats standard in every Linux distro and do their own thing. Android throws out the entire Linux filesystem heirarchy and uses its own thing which is undocumented and a huge mess. They have their own init manager, logger, use busybox AND toolbox for some reason. The source tree itself is managed by a tool called repo which manages about 100 git repositories, each a project which is a part of Android. The SoC vendors often make small changes to things like bluedroid. Like the kernel changes they have no intention of ever upstreaming any of this to the open source projects or Google. This collection of projects are built with Androids own Make build system, where they heavily hack up Make. If Google wants Android users to all be up to date they need to take a standard distro like Fedora or Debian and make it run its own window manager which is Android and its GUI. They need to get vendors to focus on upstreaming their changes and maintaining high quality code. Ideally Android should be a Linux distro you run on your phone with full package manager with updates from Google. Google has the power to do this. No one else can because it will cause Google's CTS tool to fail verifying which won't allow you to ship with Google Play.
True, but on the other hand many, if not most, OEMs never update their Android phones.
The major OEMs usually deliver one or two upgrades, and all of them do some number of updates for security fixes. But I'm quibbling, because while your statement isn't literally true it is essentially true. Devices stop getting upgrades and updates way too quickly, and none of the OEMs have any official policy stating even as much as they do, so you really have no idea (to be fair, Apple also has no official upgrade or update policy, though they do a better job).
And a lot of phones are shipped with an out of date OS!
Especially at the low end. There are a lot of very cheap phones being sold with Gingerbread, at least in terms of number of models. I don't think volume is actually very high.
I thought the 'Google One' edition phones were a good push towards trying to solve the problem (if only by shaming the OEMs), but they've died off.
The Android Ones phones are a push toward solving the problem in one market. They're low-end phones that are shipped with the most current OS and updated directly by Google. That project is still in its infancy, though, and may never come to the "first world". For the developed world, Nexus is the line Google uses to shame the OEMs, but the story has been less than stellar there, though better than most OEMs do. Nexus 4 and above have all gotten Lollipop but that only takes us back to 2012. I think Galaxy Nexus would probably also have gotten Lollipop, but the SoC vendor leaving the business made it impossible to upgrade it past Jelly Bean. The 2012 Nexus 7 got the upgrade, but runs so poorly with it that many people prefer to go back. And Google also has no official upgrade or update policy.
So, absolutely there's a problem. But it's not the lag between announcement and upgrade, it's the rapidity with which devices fall out of support and the lack of any committed support policies from OEMs that customers could use to ensure they won't have that problem (and to motivate OEMs to provide support for longer periods of time).
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