“Let’s not mince words here: This ‘Android and iPhone Update History‘ chart [OSAlert item] is not a good chart. Oh, it’s a pretty chart, to be sure artfully illustrated and researched. But this chart – done up by Michael Degusta at The Understatement and reposted by anyone unable to think clearly, apparently – is not a good chart. Or at the very least, it fails to recognize a fundamental difference between Android and iOS and the iPhone.”
Was there a point in this article?
Yes, it’s no big surprise that a cut-rate Android phone doesn’t get good after sale support. That doesn’t change the facts and the original article is good for educating people on what the compromises are.
It’s also good for showing people that if they want the best Android experience they should probably go for the Google Nexus line.
The article author also made the basic mistake of thinking that the chart meant the original iPhone can run iOS 5, which is not the case and was not claimed.
He also made the mistake of suggesting that the iphone 3g runs iOS 5, which it cannot (you need a 3gs for that).
In fact, although I think the fragmentation issue is a storm in a teacup, I do find the follow up article objectionable.
It basically makes the case that lower end devices (which are typically purchased by less advantaged consumers) don’t ‘deserve’ an update.
It’s this same mentality that attempts to justify those of lower income receiving poorer education and healthcare and it’s just wrong.
(Note that this is not a comment or criticism of Android. As I said, I don’t think there is really a huge issue with the lack of Android updates on some devices. I am just criticizing the follow-up article for basically saying ‘it’s ok to screw the consumers who didn’t buy the expensive stuff’.)
You’re mixing incompatible ideas here…
The value of human worth and entitlement/rights are not compatible with the value of products and paid services. So your argument likening cheap goods with human worth are fundamentally wrong.
All people deserve equal treatment and opportunity within the system, that is what “all men are created equal” is all about. We all have equal opportunity and worth as an individual (This does not entitle us to material possession, we must obtain that through our own actions. Unfortunately the avarice and corruption in the corporate, government and financial arenas have removed much of this equal opportunity and even how the system works for the majority. This is a problem and must be addressed, but I digress.)
Removing the argument that material objects of various worth are the same as people leaves you with only one argument. That cheap = expensive.
You are basically arguing that a cheap $0.50 screwdriver from the bargain bin at a dollar store deserves the same no questions asked lifetime replacement warranty as a $50 Snap On screwdriver. I am sorry but that is unrealistic. The cheap Android phone were created to sell to the budget market. The teens, those that normally wouldn’t buy a smartphone, and those without the means to afford the higher priced ones. They are made cheaply with lower end/priced parts with less development work. After its design and software are finalized, the company stops devoting resources to the device unless major bugs arise. If they continued to provide software development resources to the device, the price would increase, negating the whole point of its existence.
Yes it is true that those with less money buy the cheap phones because they really can’t afford the higher end phones. My question is… Why does that matter? To say it does is to bring social views into software and development support/technical issues.
Edited 2011-11-01 08:49 UTC
And yet, somehow, we do count them within one and the same system, using the same units… :/
“All people deserve equal treatment and opportunity within the system, that is what ‘all men are created equal’ is all about” is a story for good children, I’m afraid… and, it’s curious how the place cherishing this myth so strongly is also the one at the bottom of social mobility among developed countries (the actual measure of this – roughly, how much of your end results depends on “our own actions” / work / effort, and how much on the random accident of being born into proper amount of money and social connections; BTW – the popularly disparaged in said place, so called “nanny states” are at the top)
The avarice and corruption of humans removes this (the easier if they believe such myths about their place as above – just another product to sell)
And you know, there’s really nothing “premium” about the iPhone – a mass produced commodity product assembled in Chinese factories.
Well this is slightly awkward… and yet you very much cherish (and/or flaunt their financials from time to time, which now would turn out to be tasteless) a company which openly stated, on few occasions, how it desires to ignore such “lesser people” with less money – even one which tried to freeload (as we know from their 1bil settlement with Nokia) on R&D of those who do target those people / benefit them greatly.
I sometimes read articles that, willingly or not, are biased, incorrect or miss key points.
I don’t always see it because I don’t have enough knowledge on the subject matter, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
So I’m glad to see a rebuttal like this.
The problem is that the rebuttal was misinformed and did not understand the basic critique. This is one of the major critiques I have always wanted to see people raise about Android… Because I think consumers should realize that Android has a less sure upgrade cycle before buying.
And the rebuttal also assumes that people actually give a shit why it takes 9 months (as with the Droid Incredible and Gingerbread) to get a new OS update for their phone. Blame the carriers / vendors / blah … blah … blah. Personally, I’m tired of their excuses. As someone who paid a lot of money for a high-end smartphone, I expect to receive timely updates when they become available, assuming my phone has the horsepower to run it. If you can’t provide that for whatever reason, then you fail. End of discussion.
If the Google Nexus phone is the only one that can be updated in a timely manner without carriers slowing down the process, then the Google Nexus phone is the only one that should be released.
Or at least, that’s my perspective. As far as I’m concern, the Nexus phones are the only Android phones that exist anymore. The rest are like bastardized FrankenAndroid devices that should be avoided at all costs, unless you like voiding your warranty in order to get updates.
And I’m tired of the dumbass argument that says most users don’t care what version of the OS they’re running – I promise you they’re going to care when their phone gets hacked and starts making random phone calls/texts because the version of Android they were running had a vulnerability that was exploited, and was fixed in a newer version that never got ported to their phone.
I swear, if you bought a PC and the vendor told you that you shouldn’t expect to be able to install the latest updates for whatever reason that did NOT have to do with the hardware being obsolete, there would be rioting in the streets. Yet Fandroids are telling people that this kind of bullshit should be tolerated on phones, which is just their way of trying to create their own Steve Jobs-style reality distortion field.
Edited 2011-10-30 06:40 UTC
WorkNMan: So which high end Android phone do you have?
Edited 2011-10-30 16:14 UTC
I have the Droid Incredible. Well, it’s not so high end now, but was in May 2010.
It’s a critique that’s repeated all the time, so I’m not sure why you always want to see it raised. It certainly sucks. Still, it’s not like you’ve been missing out on all that much if your phone stays on Froyo (being stuck with ~A‰clair and no app2sd is worse). The improved cut & paste in Gingerbread is certainly nice, but not needed for software running under it, and the old one won’t stop working. Software written for Android usually supports older revisions of the OS. It’s not like on OS X, where developers tend to immediately jump to the newest API, forcing anyone wanting to run new software to upgrade the OS.
Keep in mind that people still happily run Windows XP. It’s a well supported OS. So is Android down to version 1.6.
When Apple decide they’ll release a high, middle and low end device every 8-12 months like Samsung do, then it will become a relevant criticism. Some device makers have a bad history of updating their devices, do your research before you buy and let those device makers drown.
Until Apple are in remotely the same market, this is like comparing apples to the entirety of the frigging green-grocer.
The initial article wasn’t an analysis of the cause of the issue with Android. It was just a statement of the effects. My personal issue is that we have 1000 droid phone versions with 1000 software versions, most of them out of date. For which do we do the development? For the least common denominator? What’s the point of having new APIs if 90% of the phones don’t have access to them?
Otherwise, yes, it’s comparing Apples with Oranges.
It’s the same issue with Windows vs. Mac OS X. If you develop software for Windows, you need to have Windows XP as the baseline and have no access to Windows Vista and 7 technologies.
Oh really? How about simply targeting the API you need? When I had a Mac, the one thing that annoyed me the most was that a new OS version made the old ones instantly obsolete as the developers jumped to new APIs for no other reason than the fact that they were new.
Well, Apple has a low, middle and high end phone now. Seems relevant to me. There is nothing that requires a company to frequently release variants — maybe the point should be that is a very bad idea.
Not anywhere near low, you just show you’re tainted by very atypical place. “Low” is something like S30 Nokia 101 (25^a‘not or so without contract, dual sim, radio & mp3 player) or S40 X2-05 (45^a‘not without contract’ also camera, apps, browser).
We might of course limit ourselves to arbitrary label of “smartphones” – still, newer & better S40 devices encroach into this territory. Sub-100 (without contract) Android handsets are firmly within it.
Anything iPhone is at most middle. Apple openly boasts its business goal to ignore “lesser” people, to go after high-margins ones, that is why more than few variants is suboptimal.
This whole story isn’t about Android tot begin with. It’s about picking the right phone if you care about updates, be it for Android, Symbian, Bada, whatever.
I think the iPhone sounds pretty sweet in the same way that living with your mom sounds pretty sweet. You get a lot of perks, but one day you realise she desides who you can or can’t hang out with. Also, she won’t allow you tot watch movies with nudity.
Oh, Crappy journalism. It’s ruining my eyes!
Android could have better updates for some devices (not all), but even if you are stuck with a 2.1 or 2.2 phone you are better of than with an iPhone, IMO. The iPhone is really nice if and only if you use it for just what Steve predicted you’d use it, otherwise you’ll hit a wall pretty soon … been there, done that. The same goes for any customization and personalization of the phone. You can never make it yours, it’ll always be Apple’s.
BTW, nice notifications in iOS5
P.S.: I’m genuinely curious: can Siri be trusted to work 100% of the time? Is it really useful or it’s just a gimmick to impress your mates? Also does it work in other languages than English?
Re PS : I have put my hand on an iPhone 4S this week-end, here are a few quick comments. Siri supports French, German, US and UK English. In French, voice recognition is pretty bad at the moment, and the command vocabulary is noticeably limited (it cannot answer “where” or “who” questions, manipulating agenda entries is painfully difficult). Considering that Engadget were quite impressed, I guess not all supported languages are equal. Hope this helps.
Edited 2011-10-31 17:31 UTC
Both the original chart and the author of this rebuttal are correct. I agree that it wasn’t really fair to put low-end phones in that chart. But the thing is, even if you limit the chart to high-end phones you’ll still see that Android is horribly uneven when it comes to update support. And I’m one of the ones who’s been burned (Motorola with a horribly buggy version of Froyo on it). And yes, I damn well care whether I get the Gingerbread update, and until I get that update I will remain unsatisfied with my phone.
I think this article is spot on. Andoid doesn’t have any update or fragmentation issues; the iPhone is the one that’s fragmented!!! And even if Android has any such issues, you shouldn’t really care.
Couldn’t agree more. Sure has Android some fragmentation, but iPhone also has it.
The thing is, iPhone users as Mac users are used to be left behind after a few OS releases. I doubt that there are many software houses targeting all iPhone generations. Plus iOS does not support all previous models. So the developers are also constrained which APIs they are able across iPhone devices.
I was being sarcastic. There’s barely any fragmentation in the iOS platform. By Christmas 9 in 10 users will be on iOS 5. The similarities between the 2 in terms of fragmentation is like heaven and hell.
Let’s not start talking about developers here, the differences between the 2 markets are even more significant.
I don’t agree with that. On iOS we’re targeting iOS 5. on Android, we’re targeting 2.2. It’s not that big a deal for developers.
(Although I take your point on the market as a whole. It’s WAY WAY harder to actually make money on Android apps.)
I think bringing up a lack of iOS support for the original iPhone or iPhone 3G is absurd. Apple’s three year support cycle is longer than any other one I’ve seen in the mobile space. The point isn’t that Apple eventually quits supporting devices — every company must do that — but that they wait a lot longer to do so. Android devices are sometimes released with outdated software and stay that way for good. Right now, every new iPhone (3GS/4/4S) has a current copy of iOS on it.
Will any Android device still be receiving official updates at the 3 year mark?
Yes, the newer iPhones support additional features, but the core platform is up to date even on the 2 1/2 year old iPhone 3GS.
So for Android it is valid to complain but for iPhone not. Typical Mac fan answer.
Not at all. The iPhone and iPhone 3G are much older than any of the Android phones being considered. No one has an issue with support ending; the problem is the brevity of support on many Android phones. Give the average Android handset the same 3 years as the iPhone and I wouldn’t complain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_5800#Firmware_updates – this one has nice summary of updates on Wiki, 3.5 years and counting (essentially the same phone as many others, 5230 for example – this one just doesn’t have extensive article)
And yes, earlier big updates were rare… but that’s mostly because of the realities of HW constraints & the pace of its evolution; Apple jumped in almost at the point where such practice became possible. Previously, software needed to be much more tied to HW generation (or, how do you upgrade, say, Nokia 3310, 3510i or 5300?)
Plus, 3GS – as you say, a fairly popular phone bought new, now – will be likely dropped quite soon (relative to time after recent purchases); Apple needs supporting them longer from the launch of the device (notice, those are two different things) since they have much longer stretches between devices AND PUSH THEM ON CONSUMERS FOR MUCH LONGER (you say that yourself nearby; together with this, they might even possibly have a shorter period of support when counted from the median times of when given model was available, when it was purchased – but of course, simplistic stats won’t look at that, only at launch dates)
The average Android handset isn’t pushed for nearly so long on the consumers.
(also, if OS releases – or rather announcements, really – are more frequent, then it looks worse, it appears as if it lags more often, despite it being a function of something a bit else than speedy updates)
As a buyer of the HTC Hero, which at the time appeared to be the most likely candidate for wide-spread popularity, it is not that helpful that the author deems it “unworthy” of updating. There has never been any way for consumers to predict which phones get to live and which get to linger in obsolecence.
Trying to cast getting updates as a premium feature may almost work at the moment (as infuriating as it is), but as crackers turn their attention to smartphones as a target (and they are getting to be a very juicy target) you’d better be on the platform that is prepared to get into a patch tuesday frame of mind, and Andriod is nowhere near there.
There is no arguing with the chart. You can complain that there are a lot more phones not on the chart, but you can’t argue with its obvious correctness in showing the intended information.
Now why is the chart the way that it is? How does ubuntu just release a single version that works on 85% of computers out there made by any manufacturer? They have a single tree of code with drivers for a variety of hardware, and no special interfaces for the different computer makes. Its not that impossible, and shouldn’t be difficult to do the same on the mobile front. This is the direction that the manufactures need to go in.
While I agree that going in that direction would be beneficial, it happening seems unlikely to me. My understanding is that ARM, unlike the chips commonly used in general-purpose computers, has no standard mechanism (like the BIOS is on x86, for example) to automatically enumerate attached devices to the OS. So the OS has to know, essentially, which phone it’s running on in advance (at least until ARM gets its own “BIOS”).
Ok… I’m not up to date on how phones do that. But, shouldn’t that be pretty easy to do? How does cyanogenmod do it?
I’m not entirely sure, but since Cyanogenmod only targets specific phones, my best guess is that they compile a list of what’s on Phones X, Y, and Z (since all that’s known), and then have their own software to check for that hardware (“Oh, you have hardware a, b, and c: you must have a Motorola Droid,” or whatever). I don’t really know, though. Anybody with specific knowledge care to chime in?
Ok, well, I’m basically saying that they should do it the same way.
If a unofficial third party group can do it, then an official third party group could do it.
Only it doesn’t work that way, I think – essentially, on their site, you manually choose a download meant for your phone model.
It’s probably built on gutted config / drivers from original ROM, and/or perhaps some bits from related devices, “cooked” manually for that particular supported device.
Individual phones are just a bit too different, I guess (mix of semi-random components without any – up to now, at least, maybe it’ll change – need for auto-detection or universal initialisation methods?)
Edited 2011-11-07 00:05 UTC
The author of the article is trying to point out the differences between the two not in a technical light, but on a consumer/satisfaction level. I can’t really question the article, it is very clear: Even if it is closed and full of rules, if you buy Apple you get at least some extended support.
Choosing Android is like playing Russian roulette in terms of support.
The apps is an entirely different issue.
All in all, I’ll just keep my cell phone for calls and everything else on my ipod touch. No carriers or other crap to worry about there
WorkNMan,
You complain about the updates on Android, yet you own the Droid Incredible which is one of the best updated phones the chart lists. So what? They didn’t update it fast enough for you? Keeping in mind Apple is on a one year update cycle, you have nothing to complain about. You have had to wait a whole 12 months for an update. Be that as it may, its the same release cycle as Apple. Sorry you feel slighted.
As for the chart, its not quite clear on a couple things. Most Android phones are less than 2 years old. In that time, Android has gone through 5 major versions including ICS, not counting the 3.0 series for tablets. Thats 1.6 – 2.0 – 2.1 – 2.2 – 2.3 – 4.0. Apple has only gone through 2 major version changes. Are there some bad Android companies? Sure. But thats the nature of being free (freedom). You can take it and treat your customers like crap. Its not a fault of Android.
Wait, so 2.1 or 2.2 are considered major releases on Android but things like 4.2 and 4.3 aren’t major on an iOS device?
Also, it’s irrelevant who’s fault it is in the end – Android customers are still being treated like crap.
I see a kind of a point in what he said though. If Android releases are indeed more frequent (can’t tell), then a fair graph would use a number that is independent on the update frequency, such as the time since a given release of iOS or Android has been on the market.
Also, considering feature updates as a supreme concern leads to the release of half-baked aberrations such as iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G. What matters most is security and bugfix (“support”) updates, not breaking working phones with OS releases that do not work on them, and I’m astonished that so few comments are mentioning that. But this is another story…
Edited 2011-11-01 08:56 UTC
I’m currently trying to draw a version of this guy’s graph using these principles. I use partly this guy’s data, partly wikipedia’s one. Maybe I can post that this evening. It shows a fairly different picture, which interestingly enough may be worse for early Android.
This article was a massive attempt at rationalization and it didn’t work. At all.