A Look at the Amount of Time Smartphone Vendors Have Taken To Roll out Major Android Updates To Their Handsets, and How Things Are Beginning To Improve (androidauthority.com)

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A Look at the Amount of Time Smartphone Vendors Have Taken To Roll out Major Android Updates To Their Handsets, and How Things Are Beginning To Improve (androidauthority.com)

Posted by msmash on Sunday January 20, 2019 @04:30AM from the closer-look dept.

Most Android smartphone vendors have been notorious for the time they take to roll out the newest Android OS updates to their respective handsets. To tackle this, Google in 2017 announced Project Treble, which bypasses some middlemen in delivering new updates to consumers. With Project Treble now supported by all Android phone makers, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than before. To test this, news blog AndroidAuthority looked at the data to see where things stand. From the report: On average, Nougat updates took about 192 days to reach key devices, while Oreo was slightly faster at 170. Android Pie updates hit devices much faster, averaging just 118 days from Google's launch to significant OEM rollout. That's a significant improvement, though we're still waiting on updates from LG and HTC, which could drag this average back up. Most manufacturers are faster at providing updates now, but a few are slower. Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi were noticeably quicker this time around, bringing updates to key devices before the end of 2018. OnePlus and Sony were especially fast, but they've always been speedier than most. Disappointingly, Motorola has rolled out updates to its flagship Z series slower over the last few years.

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This is about Lock In by Deliveranc3 · 2019-01-20 04:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

I wish Google still "Don't be evil."

I had a business selling G1 (Still an excellent form factor I hope they bring it back.) and I would Root and Superuser them and install custom Roms.

They were really amazing, the early Android modding scene had a lot of potential.
25% better battery life.
40% better performance.
More customization options.
Excellent GUIs.

But I ramble.

Anyway nowadays it's hard to Root and get SuperUser and I don't understand why.

It's actually put a lifespan on Android which is sad.

Now Android is like Facebook, constantly getting worse and losing sight of what made it better than alternatives.

I don't want to be one of those old people who think things were better in the past, give me something to work with.
Uh huh... by Desler · 2019-01-20 05:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

With Project Treble now supported by all Android phone makers, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than before.
This is a rather interesting edit of a sentence from the actual linked article which says:

With Project Treble now supported by key Android flagships, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than ever before.
msmash, you do realize that the two versions do mot mean the same thing, right?
Re:Meanwhile... by alvinrod · 2019-01-20 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think that you're leaving out something even more important which is that for a lot of devices, the update will never be made available nor are there even any plans to make it available that only end up getting canceled. At some point all hardware hits end of life, but for a lot of Android phones that's artificially lower than it should be.

But on the flip side, I don't think you get to 0 without having the same kind of control that Apple exhibits, and I'm not sure that's something that would be good for Android. If you're careful with your own personal choice of which device to buy, you can get that immediately availability for yourself. It may require extra effort on your part, but that's the cost of the greater freedom that Android affords.
Re:Meanwhile... by Solandri · 2019-01-20 08:02 · Score: 2, Interesting
But on the flip side, I don't think you get to 0 without having the same kind of control that Apple exhibits,
Technically, Apple's iOS release are not available on their phones in 0 days.
- Apple's software guys are happy with all the feature changes they want to make to iOS. This is analogous to Google making a new version of Android available.
- Apple then tests it internally on their current, upcoming, and older phones to make sure everything still works. If something doesn't work, the software guys have to tweak it further, test it on all models again, repeat. Until it's finally ready to be released to to all users. This is analogous to the Android version being rolled out to the different phones.
So the difference is that in Apple's case, the lag between software feature freeze and end of hardware testing is internal and hidden from the public. In Android's case, the lag is public, making people antsy about a "delay" which really is nonexistent. Android rollouts are "slower than iOS" only if you use different ways of measuring how long a rollout takes for the two OSes.

In other words, if Google did it Apple's way, they would not release the new version of Android on their AOSP servers the moment their software guys were finished with it. They would send it in secret to all their OEM vendors, then OEM vendors would work to modify it to make it compatible with all their devices. All OEMs would be embargoed from releasing the new version of Android until the last OEM finished their testing and had it ready for their phones. Then there would be a simultaneous rollout of The New Version of Android across all devices and on the AOSP servers on "day 0".

So really, those graphs in TFA should be inverted, with the last OEM to release each Android version set at zero. And the bars for the other OEMs indicating how many days before day 0 you got the new Android version on your device, because your vendor managed to finish modifying and testing that Android version before what would've been day 0 in Apple's case.