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Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

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Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#61

Post by fluidcruft »

SamColes wrote: post #34
d_r wrote: post #6

The current situation is somewhat unfair to the indiscrete / non-tech-savvy consumer since they might buy an Android phone without understanding the differences from the iOS ecosystem. At least several of my friends did. "They're about the same right? And this one was $30 cheaper!" And I genuinely feel bad every time this happens. Note that I of course have no gripes with Android OS/concept itself -- it's a good cont…

Are OS updates really that important for most consumers? I have a Desire running Froyo. I don't think I've really missed out on a huge amount by not getting Gingerbread.

The Eclair/Froyo barrier is quite significant. No JIT, no App2Sd, no flash, no animated gif, abandoned Gmail app ... etc.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#62

Post by maukdaddy »

bpolania wrote: post #51

It's an important omission not to mention that Android-based phones prices are declining at a much faster pace than iOS based phones. This is important because in many cases updating from one android to the next version (and sometimes to the next next version) is less expensive than buying a simple iPhone, rendering the need for further support unnecessary.

But people are limited by a 2 year contract for the "cheap" phones. They can't upgrade until that two year period is over.

Suggesting that people upgrade to a new phone vs. upgrading software is terrible business and environmental practice!

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#63

Post by lukejduncan »

ricw wrote: post #33

It's funny that these kind of long-term "features" don't get taken into consideration for any of the phone reviews. Its probably one of the most important features of a phone. I'm currently torn apart between buying an iPhone 4s and the galaxy nexus, but given that I can expect the iphone to be supported and updated instantly and regulary for a long time, and not with any of the android phones (less than 2 years for…

Don't buy a galaxy nexus. I was an Android fan boy and bought the Nexus One. "It's a Google phone!" I thought. I figured it would get timely updates and be a stable phone. It's far from stable.

I think a good anecdote for my frustrations is navigation. When I first bought the phone, I wasn't able to turn the screen off during navigation. I would turn it off, and it would turn itself back on draining my battery. An update came along and fixed it. For a little while it worked as I expected. Another update came along and now I can turn my screen off when navigating but 50% of the time when I do I have to unlock my screen.

Over time Android and it's core feature set have been consistently inconsistent. At first it's forgiveable because you assume upgrades will fix it, but its hard to call it anything but extremely poor quality at this point.

My next phone will be an iPhone

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#64

Post by gujk »

bpolania wrote: post #51

It's an important omission not to mention that Android-based phones prices are declining at a much faster pace than iOS based phones. This is important because in many cases updating from one android to the next version (and sometimes to the next next version) is less expensive than buying a simple iPhone, rendering the need for further support unnecessary.

I don't know about the middling phones, but flagship Nexus and iOS phones have been $540 - $600 unsubsidized. For a 2 vs 3 year lifespan (to be generous to Android), you would need a $400 Android to balance a $600 iPhone.

You can't compare a $100 vs $200 subsidized phone, since that is just hiding the cost in the contract, which can be avoided.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#65

Post by brlewis »

davidedicillo wrote: post #41
ajanuary wrote: post #19

Limiting it to 3 years masks the fact that lots of people still had iPhone 3G phones on 2 year contracts when Apple stopped offering updates for it. That said, the fact even that's off the scale is worrying for Android.

well that was all the data they had in october 2010 when they collected the data.

The graphic claims that the data is as of the end of October 2011.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#66

Post by gujk »

lukejduncan wrote: post #63
ricw wrote: post #33

It's funny that these kind of long-term "features" don't get taken into consideration for any of the phone reviews. Its probably one of the most important features of a phone. I'm currently torn apart between buying an iPhone 4s and the galaxy nexus, but given that I can expect the iphone to be supported and updated instantly and regulary for a long time, and not with any of the android phones (less than 2 years for…

Don't buy a galaxy nexus. I was an Android fan boy and bought the Nexus One. "It's a Google phone!" I thought. I figured it would get timely updates and be a stable phone. It's far from stable. I think a good anecdote for my frustrations is navigation. When I first bought the phone, I wasn't able to turn the screen off during navigation. I would turn it off, and it would turn itself back on draining my battery. An up…

Sad but true. Keyboard or Market or Launcher or something crashes every day on my N1. These are core OS components on the reference device sold by the platform owner.

The ridiculous thing is that these apps relaunch and work fine on the 2nd or 3rd try, so why does Google give me an annoying crash popup instead of relaunching (like Browser is sometimes clever enough to do)

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#67

Post by adolph »

bpolania wrote: post #51

It's an important omission not to mention that Android-based phones prices are declining at a much faster pace than iOS based phones. This is important because in many cases updating from one android to the next version (and sometimes to the next next version) is less expensive than buying a simple iPhone, rendering the need for further support unnecessary.

Yes, it does play to the carriers' customer retention biz plan for folks to upgrade HW to get the latest OS annually rather than when the contract runs out.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#68

Post by fluidcruft »

degusta wrote: post #49
juliano_q wrote: post #35

I think that the fact that the chart stopped at June 2010 makes it looks much worse than it is now. Android is newer than iOS and works on a very different environment. Support 4 devices is much easier than 4 thousand. If you extend this chart to 2011 you will notice that the platform is more mature and most of the phones will receive ICS (my wife Galaxy S is a relatively old device and will get it).

You might be right re it gets better - though not as sure about the ICS bit. It is my intention to keep at it & add (ideally) every phone.

Here, I'll fill in a data point you missed:

Motorola Milestone XT720 released June 2011 (USA: August)

Runs 2.1

No bugfixes

No updates

No upgrades

Buggy as hell. 2.2 upgrades and flash support pledged by Motorola sales/support at the time of release in the US -- later clarified that those employees had been "confused" when the mothballing was made official in late November.

Those Apple green bars look quite nice, but I'm not a fan. Maybe add some Windows phone.

The problem as I see it is that since Android is Open Source, the manufacturers don't abstract their innovations into a HAL. For example, Motorola's FM radio and HDMI support is peppered all over inside the core eclair framework. So, someone has to mix it all together again with each new release. Usually in the FOSS space, we like to believe that the effort of maintaining private forks encourages companies to contribute their efforts back to the open source project. That doesn't work here, because manufacturers like Motorola also have the viable option to simply abandon their forks. Which is even less effort.

Apple has a huge economy of scale--only four or five devices (most very similar) with relatively humongous market share per device. The personnel/device ratio obviously supports a much better customer experience than any Android device can offer (with the exception of perhaps the Android developer phones).

I can only assume Microsoft knows what they are doing and enforces abstractions and barriers that limit the scope of manufacture monkeying.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#69

Post by blinkingled »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #44
degusta wrote: post #2

I wrote the piece / did the research. Happy to answer any questions or comments people might have.

As an owner of a iPhone 3G I don't agree with the solid green color that it gets. It was rendered unusable by iOS4.0, and although it was on "the current version" up until the release of iOS5 I don't recall it getting any actual feature from iOS4 other than faster javascript in the browser. So things are not as binary as depicted there. It also seems like you're looking at Android through an Apple lens where the only…

You saved me writing a post. Totally agreed on the features part which matters most for the updates second to security.

The only open issue with Android is security updates. Manufacturers often release minor patch level updates (HTC did recently for their logger fiasco for e.g., My Atrix went 2 minor updates before getting Gingerbread etc.) but that still leaves the phones vulnerable to browser based attacks at least.

With Google making Browser and many other system apps uninstallable/replaceable in ICS may be they can update it like every other app - through market.

With Android 5.0 Google should focus on near complete modularization - all user space apps / libs can be updated by Google independently of the phone just like GMail. This may not be 100% possible but they should do as much as they can practically.

Re: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

#70

Post by technoslut »

gujk wrote: post #58
technoslut wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And don't forget the mandatory "crapware" that carriers pre-install. ICS supposedly solves this problem but one has to wonder how many low-end Android phones will be sold in the next year (or even two?) that won't support ICS since the N1 won't be getting it.

ICS makes preinstalled apps removable? Even one Google preinstalls, like Maps and Gallery and Twitter?

You can hide it within preferences which is probably the main issue with many users. From what I've seen these apps matter very little in terms of storage.
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