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Half of Android users are stuck on old versions
FIGURES that are being bandied about by Google show that almost 50 per cent of Android users are stuck with smartphones that are running old versions of the operating system.
The good news for developers is that out of the six versions of Android only three, 1.5, 1.6 and 2.1 have widespread use. The figures also show that almost all Motorola Milestone and Droid users have now upgraded to Android 2.1.
The figure of 49.6 per cent represents those Android users are left using Android 1.5 and 1.6. It is also a damning indictment of the handset manufacturer's failure to keep pace with Google's energetic OS update schedule. This has resulted in users being denied access to features and, more importantly, applications on the Android Market.
With Android 2.1 and more recently Android 2.2 bringing in a number of enticing features, users and developers will be hoping that the device manufacturers get on the stick and release updates. Motorola has shown that even after delays it managed to do a pretty good job at getting its users off Android 2.0.
The report doesn't include statistics for Android 2.2, since at present users have to hack their devices in order to load the latest version of the operating system. Android 2.2, for those stuck on version 1.5 or 1.6, must seem like a distant dream, especially as manufacturers such as Sony seem determined to lag behind the latest version of Google's Linux based smartphone operating system.
Android isn't the only operating system to suffer from fragmentation, as Apple's Iphone OS is set for its latest update. That will leave punters with the first generation Iphone behind completely and those using an Iphone 3G won't even have multitasking support, which is something that is present on Android.
At this point, with the number of devices running Android growing almost daily, developers can only hope that Google offers some incentives for lazy device manufacturers to keep their smartphones up to date. µ
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Windows 3.1 applications are probably 16-bit so they won't work on the latest Windows - I think XP is the last hurrah there. And applications up to and including XP are liable to assume that you and they have full rights (administrator rights) to fiddle with any settings on the PC, such as the Windows folder or registry entries - so that they'll crash if you try to run them as another user account. Some don't even have the concept of a multi-user system.
In fact, if you don't count Windows CE, Vista was the operating system that you couldn't count on to run any older software and they told you so going in. They sneered at you for wanting to. And if I'm rightly informed, now with Windows Phone 7 they've done it absolutely on purpose. Intentionally and by design, nothing that you currently use will work on that platform.
Long life to Nokia and their excellent support!! ;)
Pretty much, yes. First iPhones are fast approaching their 3rd birthday. Only now are their users not getting new, free features anymore. Their younger cousins are slowly and gracefully dropping out of update cycles. That's something a lot of Samsung-users have wet dreams about - that is updates to make their phones actually work, new features would probably make their heads explode.
And boo-fucking-hoo, Mr. Latif, is there a paragraph in your contract that says you HAVE TO HAVE A SIDE BLOW AT APPLE IN EVERY ARTICLE?
Could it be that since Androids first year was the end of 2008, you will see the majority of those who first started with Android (the majority of them through T-Mobile) will be eligible for upgrades in the near future. I, for one, am one of these people. I have a G1 but do not want to upgrade until I am up for an upgrade at the special low price. I think these gaps will start disappearing very very soon.
Oh come on, it's well known that the vast majority of gadget producers make a device and pretend to their potential customers that they are 'committed' to keeping their device up to date and removing bugs.
Once it's been on the market for 9 months they drop the device and move onto the next one.
Why expect them to break the habit of a lifetime?
*See Cowan/Sony web sites for prime examples.
As I'm a IT engineer for over 20 years now I've seen a lot of these trends come and go in circles forever repeating themselves.
This is one excellent reason I'm tempted to buy my first Apple device soon. At least they support their obsolete devices for a reasonable length of time.
I feel manufacturers should contribute to android code and help google make android better for everyone. Google should also make efforts to slow the fragmentation. Samsung, LG, Sony do not improve the software or remove bugs once the phone is released while Nokia,Apple and Motorola have helped users upgrade software and therefore have better image with customers. When I think of buying a phone on a two year contract, I have to think about the phone support and upgrade potential as well and that is where I hate buying Samsung or LG or some other chinese manufacturer who are only good in writing big technical specifications to make it sell but not the software to make it working properly or provide product lifecycle support.
I love the pc/linux model where you can use any hardware and any operating system and wish it comes to mobiles as well giving more power to us customers the way we use the phone and update it as required. It will also help the environment if we do not discard our old phones just to get some new app or software feature if the phone meets the minimum hardware requirements.
Manufacturers can charge for software updates and apps instead of making up dump the old phone and making us buying a new one just for the software update.
Companies like to complain that these things take time, or are too hard.
Why is it then that I can install Windows 3.1, install some apps, upgrade to Win95, 98, XP, 7 and most likely those original apps will still work? It even used to be that legacy device drivers would magically migrate too.
Because flatly, Google are doing it wrong. They're tying the bundle too tightly. Drivers, Kernel, UI should all be layered like the OSI model. We should be able to upgrade the Kernel without changing the UI or the Drivers.
Ideally, the Drivers should even be in different partitions.
That's how you stop fragmentation.
Of course, there will come a point where features cannot work on the handset. The trick there is to OS version obsolescence out to about 3 years - where it essentially doesn't matter any more.
Which is more or less what Apple have done. Now their 3 year old phones cant be upgraded. Who cares? Hardly anyone.
The best thing about Android is the fact that you can buy a phone that fits your precise needs and wallet.
Yes to better APIs to deal with the multitude of extra bits of hardware but no to making all Androids look and feel identical.
Also, HTC's SenseUI is infinitely better than the standard Android UI so would rather HTC look after my UI experience and let Google concentrate on the innards.
Fragmentation is the biggest non-issue there is. The pro Apple IT press has hyped it up so that everyone thinks it's Androids biggest achillies heel which just isn't true. 3 'major' OS versions is trifling and even then I gained about 1% functionality increase upgrading from 1.5 to 2.1 on my Hero. Frankly, whilst I do like the new functionality, it's made pretty little difference to how I use my phone and there's not all that many apps that won't work on 1.5.
I very much doubt most Android users are aware (or even care) about the OS version they have so long as they can get the apps to do what they want.
Sure, the developers have to make a decision as to what functionality their apps need but an app that only needs 1.5 features can be compiled to work on all versions with no serious effort.
Android is a new OS, just coming out of it's pubescent stage. It's now got the features it needs so now it's time to concentrate on making it easier for manufacturers to bolt on whatever hardware/software they want, regardless of OS version and definitely tidy up some of the UI rough edges but I still would not like to be forced to go back to any UI that wasn't at least as good as SenseUI.
Depends on your contract and how hard you push your carrier to abide buy the terms for OS upgrades. That is if they're even mentioned. But, most users have either never read the contract and stay in OS limbo or just don't care to push it.
The statistics are meniongful only if the 49% not upgraded actually give a damn. Contrary to fanboi beliefs, most people don't care, or even understand, what an OS is, much less give a hoot about their version. They just want the thing to do as expected.
Amen brother but it'll never happen. It'd be like British Airways buying a new fleet of jets and not putting their corporate name on them. Just never happen.
The manufacturers don't care once you have bought their hardware. It doesn't make sense to retro-fit new OS to old handsets when they can put the shiny new version on their shiny new handset for you to upgrade to. They are in business after all.
Because device manufacturers customize android, it takes more time and money to roll out updates. HTC has "HTC Sense", Samsung has TouchWiz. If it were plain android, it would have been much easier to roll out updates. Perhaps device manufacturers should use less cutomization, and put more effort in improving the common android..