There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use • Hacker News Board

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#471

Post by quanticle » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 8:39 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #356

quanticle wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cynical and paranoid mindset. Bloat is a lazy tendency not a malicious evil and developers tend to optimise for the latest and greatest if left unchecked and forced to consider backwards compatibility. As a user, do I care whether my phone is unusable because the developers wanted specifically to render older hardware unusable or whether it was just through their negligence in failing to consider older devic…

> Stupidity or malice, the result is the same Yes but whether we attribute the intent to stupidity or malice is important as per the general health of our thought process. Its likely laziness combined with malice when its noted. I imagine a dev getting up in arms about package size and then when the issue is raised its not given high priority because someone twigs the convenient side effect. That's the worst case. Ei…

Where are the Android LSASS worms? Or Android SQL Slammer? Or Android ILoveYou? Or Android NotPetya? Or any one of the literally hundreds of well-known malware strains that make the news every time they infect a few million PCs? Malware on Android certainly does exist, but the fact that Android has been out for this long, with this many outdated devices, and we haven't seen a single mass infection yet means that Android isn't as easy to exploit on a mass scale as people make it out to be.

I'm not claiming that Android is safe. Nothing is safe. But it does security professionals no good to be alarmists. If we cry wolf about literally every technology that ordinary people use, the result is not people giving up technology. The result is people ignoring security professionals.

If an ordinary user came to you and asked, "Where should I do my banking? On my phone or on my PC?" what would your answer be?

Re: There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use

#472

Post by stevenwoo » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 8:46 PM UTC

sls wrote: post #90

stevenwoo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Nexus 6P is eligible for 8.0 under the beta program, the last time I checked, 8.0 was still not available for it in the official channel so I had to switch to the beta program to try out 8.0 on a device.

Outside the US? My 6P got official 8.0 non-beta in September, I'm pretty sure. OTA, the whole nine yards.

Inside the US. I push the check for updates button in October and it told me no. I might have declined once, though.

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

#473

Post by stevenwoo » Thu, Nov 16, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #112

stevenwoo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Nexus 6P is eligible for 8.0 under the beta program, the last time I checked, 8.0 was still not available for it in the official channel so I had to switch to the beta program to try out 8.0 on a device.

8.0 has officially been available for the Nexus 6P since August.

Thanks, exiting the beta program to see what happens now.

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

#474

Post by koffiezet » Thu, Nov 23, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #339

koffiezet wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite the opposite. It's hw companies not used to having to support their stuff after it leaves the door. To keep supporting this, they should plan/calculate this in from the get-go. They don't plan anything, so now you have devices that don't get updates. Supporting/updating devices requires active planning, but then you get cries over companies that actually do perform updates and get the whole 'planned obso…

Android device manufactors are not solely hardware companies. Samsung surely is not, they do publish updates for some time, then they stop doing that. This is planned. As time progresses your device becomes less usable, not because of the hardware, but of the software and bugs/security issues within. So if your (example) Samsung device gets updates for 2 years, then the planned obsolescence for that device is 2 years…

People make the mistake of thinking of Samsung as a single company - but it is not. Samsung's phone division is absolutely a hardware company, and so are the majority if their divisions. If they would be a software company, their Tizen OS would be in a lot better shape - but it's not.

And most Android manufacturers are hardware companies - their margins are too thin to support/maintain the software side of it. 90%+ of their R&D budget is hardware. It's the same as HP's computer division. No they are not a software company, they use MS Windows as the OS and make sure the correct drivers are present/integrated. This is exactly the same on Android. They buy off-the-shelve chipsets, integrate their drivers - which are developed by the chipset manufacturer - into Android, pour over some crappy GUI customization, in many cases developed by a 3rd party, and they're done.