Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 474 posts

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

Ologn wrote: post #2

> We’ve seen that Android devices appear to be getting more out of date over time. This makes it difficult for developers to target “new” Android API features, where new means anything introduced in the past few years. This used to be more of a problem, but the support library deals with this more nowadays. Not for every change and new feature, but for most of them.

The support library helps a lot, but will never be a complete fix either. Support for KitKat, for example, is beginning to wither, while appcompat had kept it alive for years.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#12

Post by opportune »

The flipside of this is that developers are forced to support versions of their apps that are compatible with previous operating systems. That's bad for developers, but good for consumers.

iPhones shove updates down your throat as a user. They're so persistent that inevitably most people will accept the new update - and even if you're stubborn like me, eventually your apps will no longer be supported under the newer OS's, and you are forced to update to keep using them. The problem is that the OS upgrades invariably slow down older phones, so even if you're perfectly happy with your iPhone to begin with, it starts to act slow as it gets the newer OS's. It's good that Android users can at least avoid this particular kind of planned obsolescence

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#13

Post by ams6110 »

na85 wrote: post #4

Having to wait and sometimes pray for your vendor to ship an update is why I chose to stick to the Nexus line of phones until it ended. My next device may or may not be a Pixel, but the above coupled with the shitty "value adds" like custom file managers and stuff that Samsung et al tend to cram into their already bloated Android implementations pretty much guarantees I'll never by a Samsung or similar. My wife's Gal…

Would be great if Google made a phone that was affordable. As it is now your choices are spending at least $600 or more to get a phone that will be supported, or buying a phone that probably comes with an outdated Android out of the box and that will never get an update.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#14

Post by gcbw2 »

coding123 wrote: post #8

This is why I will only ever buy the OnePlus brand at this point. I used to buy Nexus until they started skyrocketing the price (Ting user here) not to mention my last nexus bricked itself when the battery got low.

This comment is absolutely meaningless. You realize none of the models you mention have open sourced drivers, right? thanks to two or three companies that refuse to share their super secret (ha, it is all commodity) code to power the modem, camera, digitizer, SoC, etc.

All those devices will continue to only be supported for <4 years (in the very best case!) and then off to increase the "outdated devices" count or the landfill!

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#15

Post by dogma1138 »

nextos wrote: post #9
coding123 wrote: post #8

This is why I will only ever buy the OnePlus brand at this point. I used to buy Nexus until they started skyrocketing the price (Ting user here) not to mention my last nexus bricked itself when the battery got low.

Is OnePlus good at updates? With CopperheadOS going non-free, but still open, and Pixel getting an order of magnitude more expensive than Nexus I'm looking for alternatives to run LineageOS.

No it’s not the one plus one was killed very quickly. Not to mention it has its own privacy concerns atm.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#16

Post by coding123 »

nextos wrote: post #9
coding123 wrote: post #8

This is why I will only ever buy the OnePlus brand at this point. I used to buy Nexus until they started skyrocketing the price (Ting user here) not to mention my last nexus bricked itself when the battery got low.

Is OnePlus good at updates? With CopperheadOS going non-free, but still open, and Pixel getting an order of magnitude more expensive than Nexus I'm looking for alternatives to run LineageOS.

You know they are not perfect, I've seen them between 2 and 5 months behind, typically 2 months though. But it beats Samsung and all the big brands - they update all their older phones not just the latest.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#17

Post by on_and_off »

amorphid wrote: post #6
Ologn wrote: post #2

> We’ve seen that Android devices appear to be getting more out of date over time. This makes it difficult for developers to target “new” Android API features, where new means anything introduced in the past few years. This used to be more of a problem, but the support library deals with this more nowadays. Not for every change and new feature, but for most of them.

If don't mind answering, I'd love it if you could provide an example or two of features that are implementable enough with support libraries, but would be a pain to build without them.

not op but :

Most of the graphical widgets in Android apps come from the support lib.

The most complex and important is probably RecyclerView : it allows to implement recycling lists of items and replace the framework implementation.

It is not even part of the base framework since it is way more convenient to update it independently from the OS (and as a dev, you only have to handle whatever version you ship your app with).

There are shims for many of the framework features too, for exemple notifications or media.

Overall it makes the dev experience very smooth.

IMO the problem with the lack of update is mostly security

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#18

Post by weeks »

amorphid wrote: post #6
Ologn wrote: post #2

> We’ve seen that Android devices appear to be getting more out of date over time. This makes it difficult for developers to target “new” Android API features, where new means anything introduced in the past few years. This used to be more of a problem, but the support library deals with this more nowadays. Not for every change and new feature, but for most of them.

If don't mind answering, I'd love it if you could provide an example or two of features that are implementable enough with support libraries, but would be a pain to build without them.

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/layout/recycle...

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/exoplayer.h...

RecyclerViews are only implemented in the support libraries, even for newer versions of Android. I haven't used Exoplayer personally but by reputation it does all of the hard media stuff for you.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#19

Post by sizzzzlerz »

I've got a 7 or 8 year old Google Nexus phone. Google stopped updating the OS 5 years ago. The only impact I've noticed is that newer apps won't run on and older OS. For me, however, that really isn't a problem since I use it for making and receiving calls and texts, and checking my email. Right now, I'm in no hurry to lay out hundreds for a new phone, Apple or Android, that will be obsoleted in just a couple years when the vendor abandons it.

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#20

Post by jasode »

junkscience2017 wrote: post #3

For most users, the phone works and they don't care. For everyone in my family, iOS updates are just an annoyance.

Yes, I think user apathy has to be a big part of it.

I have a 2012 iPhone5 with iOS 6.1.3 still on it. I never upgraded it. When iOS 7 came out, all the news reports said it killed the battery. Same with iOS 8, 9, and finally iOS X.

Yes, I assume that eventually, iOS point release 7.x.x fixed the battery issue but I don't care to keep visiting news websites to figure out which exact version is finally "safe" to upgrade. I don't want to be a slave to the housekeeping of my phone.

Others say the news reports are alarmist -- all one has to do after a new iOS release is to dig into the settings and disable all the new features/polling/etc that eats up the battery. But it's the same situation -- I don't want to put the effort into learning "what's new" that I have to disable.

On the other hand, I'll quickly upgrade major releases of MS Visual Studio from VS2015 to VS2017, or upgrade Webstorm from 2016 to 2017.

I was puzzled over my contradictory approaches to updating software. I think I figured it out: my phone feels like an "appliance" to me instead of a computer and I don't want to mess it up. Another reason is that Apple won't let me pick an exact version to upgrade. I can't pick iOS 7.1.2 -- I'm forced to upgrade to the buggy iOS X or nothing at all.

As a result, I have willingly performed an "IE6" legacy lobotomy on my iPhone.

(As trivia, I also notice that iPhone5s on ebay that still have iOS 6 sell for a slightly higher premium.)

Post reply on HN