On the heels of Microsoft bashing Google's hands-off Android update policy at Ignite 2015, Lucian Armasu at Tom's Hardware has an editorial reaffirming Android's update woes:
Android 5.0 and Android 5.1 (Lollipop) [...] currently represent 9.0 percent and 0.7 percent of the Android market, respectively, for a combined total of 9.7 percent. That's definitely nothing to be proud about, because it could be years by the time the vast majority of users are on the Android 5+ platforms. By then, 10 percent of users could be on Android 8.0.
Because Android is open source and because so many (essentially) OEM-tweaked "forks" of it exist, a "clean" upgrade path is almost impossible. To have a clean standardized update system would mean all the OEMs would have to agree to abide strictly by Google's guidelines for what they can and cannot modify on the platform. However, as soon as Google tries to do something like that, the OEMs usually cry foul that Google is making Android more proprietary and restricting what they can do with it. Google may also not want to upset the OEMs too much by forcing a unified update system on them either, because of the fear that those OEMs could take their business elsewhere, as it were.
When we look at the matter practically, though, we see that some have already tried that (Samsung with Tizen), and it hasn't worked very well. The reality is that Android and iOS are so entrenched in the market right now that it's hard to believe a significant third platform could arise on mobile when it comes to apps. Even Microsoft, after spending billions upon billions trying to make Windows Phone popular, has essentially admitted failure on the app store front, and is now trying to make Android and iOS apps work with Windows instead.
Google also can't and shouldn't leave the responsibility to OEMs and carriers anymore, because so far they've proven themselves to be quite irresponsible from this point of view. At best, we see flagship smartphones being updated for a year and a half, and even that is less than the time most people keep their phones. Even worse, the highest volume phones (lower-end handsets) usually never get an update. If they do it's only one update, and it comes about a year after Google released that update to other phones, giving malicious attackers plenty of time to take advantage of those users.
This update "system," if you can call it that, ends up leaving the vast majority of Android users with security holes in their phones and without the ability to experience new features until they buy new phones (which is sadly a kind of planned obsolescence as well). This can't be an acceptable state of affairs for Google, and it shouldn't be. Google already has a great six-week update system for Chromebooks, and it's time to have Android catch up to that, as well.
Related Stories
Google announced "Android M" at the Google I/O developer conference. It follows "Android L," or Lollipop, which only represents about 10% of the install base.
Google outlined six major areas of improvement in Android M. Permissions controls will be more granular, with apps asking for permission when some features are used (e.g. "Allow WhatsApp to access your microphone?"). You can install apps without allowing them all of the permissions they ask for, and manage permissions after the fact at any time. However, only apps targeting Android M with the latest Android SDK will allow these changes; existing apps won't automatically gain this functionality unless they update.
A feature called Chrome Custom Tabs will allow apps to have a customized instance of the Chrome browser run atop the application when a user clicks on a hyperlink. This allows customization of the user interface, increases performance vs. launching the full browser, and means that "all of a user's autofill data, passwords, and cache are available when they open links within that application." Custom Tabs are an alternative to using a WebView. Apps will also be able to communicate with their own web servers to verify that links to their own websites should be redirected to the app. Previously, clicking a link may bring up a menu asking if you want to complete the action using a browser or an app.
Users will be able to use their fingerprint to authorize Android Pay transactions. Other apps will also be able to use the fingerprint authentication API.
Finally, Android M will introduce a new feature called Doze, which will use motion detection to decide whether the device should shut down background activity to reduce idle power usage, such as when it is sitting unused on a desk. Google is claiming two times longer idle battery life on the Nexus 9 using Doze.
Original Submission
The Microsoft Build Developer Conference 2015, or Build 2015, runs from April 29th to May 1st. Already, many surprises have been revealed:
We got Android apps running on Windows. A Microsoft IDE running on Linux. .NET ported to Linux, too. Support for Objective C, the language that only Apple and NeXT has ever really used. Support for Google and Apple APIs - in fact, just carry on writing for Google and Apple. Wild, untamed Win32 binaries scaling the ramparts of the Microsoft Store. Phones turning into proper PCs when you plug them into a monitor and keyboard.
Rumors of Android apps running on Windows 10 turned out to be mostly true; Windows 10 will include an "Android subsystem" and many Android APIs to allow app code to be easily reused by developers, but Android apps won't automatically run on the OS. "[Project] Astoria also provides Java developers with hooks to Windows APIs that aren't present on Google's platform." In addition, Microsoft is courting iOS developers:
[More...]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:17PM
What would Google get out of this?
They already spend enough time and money pursuing projects without any plan to make money. Are they loosing marketshare due to this problem?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:33PM
The same thing MS got out of it when they started to take it serious.
The phone market is even more fickle than the computer market. In 2-3 years the whole stats could upside down to a different platform. Because people go thru phones that quickly.
They will have to be careful though. Apple can pull it off as there is exactly 1 phone that runs their OS so upgrade path is well known.
They have decent problem. The 'feature phone'. Basically the phone where some company cranks it out a run then immediately EOLs the thing. That ends up hurting the android 'name' in the long run. People come to associate android with crap phones that are flaky. For example if I say I bought a packard bell computer some on this board would start to snicker. Their brand was tarnished *that* bad.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by snick on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:57PM
Not everyone has $600 to drop on a phone. You can get a no-contract Android phone for $10 [amazon.com] And yeah, the phone sucks, and is back level on the OS, and we can all sneer at it, and the carrier associated with it. But it is still just $10. The cheapest no-contract iPhone on Amazon is over 10x as much. (also with a sneer-worthy carrier)
Shitty Android phones fill a niche in the market that _would_not_upgrade_ to the latest Android/iOS phones. Are you saying that Google should walk away from this market?
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:05PM
Shoot, even for those of us who ARE willing and interested in dumping the money on such a phone, it's not just as simple as firing up an Amazon window and one-click ordering a phone. You have to do some research into non-intuitive things like whether or not the particular version of the phone you are ordering will work on your carrier's network. Super complicated? No, but not the kind of thing you do in 20 minutes while eating breakfast.
I'd have already ordered an Android-based phone to replace my dying iPhone 4s if it weren't for that (and the associated analysis paralysis of having quite a few options).
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:22PM
You have to do some research into non-intuitive things like whether or not the particular version of the phone you are ordering will work on your carrier's network
Really? Of all the things that I've thought to check when buying a phone, that's one that's never crossed my mind. It might be a US-only thing.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:17PM
LOL I googled around for fun and the LG phone you linked to isn't even an android phone, its just a skinned feature phone. No apps, no nothing, just some trademark/copyright violation graphics. Its my old 1990s StarTac with a touch screen instead of buttons.
As a happy customer of republic wireless since the beta days they offer one for $100. Thats only like 5 months of monthly payment, practically a rounding error.
Tablets are worse. I imagine that sitting on retail shelves you can still find some old 2.2 era android tablets at walmart or whatever for like $50.
Go to amazon and search for "Unnecto U-660-2NA Drone Unlocked GSM Quad-Band Mobile Phone - US Warranty - Silver" and you'll find a Froyo Android 2.2 brand new generic phone with prime shipping for $58.86. I guarantee it'll never be upgraded. They don't list the storage which implies its awful like 128 megs or something.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:17PM
"immediately EOLs the thing"
Sounds familiar. I find it funny that Microsoft is "bashing" Google for this given their history in mobile OS support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @05:39PM
The only reason we have the phones today is because of Steve Jobs. He basically walked in and said 'take it or leave it' none of this 2 years to qualify it on the network crap. AT&T took the bait and profited handsomely from it. Companies were using qualification to make their networks look good. If a phone is crappy and drops out all the time what do you blame? The phone or the network when your buddies phone on another network 'works just fine 2 feet away from me'.
MS has a whole host of reasons for CEs failure. Immediate EOL was not one of them. More like it was a crashy bitchy thing to setup with a 10 meg data plan.
(Score: 4, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:24PM
The same thing MS got out of it when they started to take it serious.
seriously
I see this way too much. It's getting really annoying.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:51PM
If both Google and Apple squirt out a new version every year or less to keep up with the Joneses, and the average age of an iPhone is 6 months, and the average age of an android phone is 2 years, then google is going to be at a competitive disadvantage because they have to maintain 4 times as many old dev tools, libraries, backported security fixes, and work arounds, and the new stuff pretty much has to be backwards compatible, more so than apple anyway.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:31PM
Right, so it's in google's interest to stop letting OEMs fuck up the core design. All they do with it is put in crapware anyways.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:44PM
And just like desktops someone is paying the OEM to put the crapware on. So crapware author says "Heres a pile of money now put my crapware on each phone" vs google (and the customers) say "I'd prefer you not do that, and no I don't have any money", so not hard to guess which side wins.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 06 2015, @05:24PM
Our marketplaces are so perverse.
Not that I'm a free market fundamentalist in the first place, but this is the difference between capitalism and consumerism. In the former, people are agents making choices, in the latter, they're a resource to extract money from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:48PM
It appears that your 1st category was meant to be "Competitive market" and your 2nd "Non-competitive market".
If there was proper competition, buyers could find what they wanted.
Megacorporations, "intellectual property", litigation, etc. really kill it for the little guy who actually wants to compete.
The day Reagan decided to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, it was all over for competition in the USA.
(No President since then has rejected Reganism and you see what we have now.)
.
Capitalism == Concentrations of wealth
Capitalism == Disempowered employees (!A self-directed workforce)
Capitalism == A board of directors (which the workers have no say in selecting)[1]
N.B. Stalinism was State Capitalism; there was still a small board of directors that made the choices and the workers had no say in selecting that group.
[1] ...and neither do most stockholders when 1 guy (or a tiny group) holds over 50 percent of the stock.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday May 06 2015, @10:02PM
Right, so it's in google's interest to stop letting OEMs fuck up the core design. All they do with it is put in crapware anyways.
I suggest that Google fucked up the core design from the word go. (Or rather the developers of Android, from which Google bought Android), took a perfectly good Linux model and proceeded to bundle everything into the kernel.
Skins, radio drivers, storage drivers, and a BOATLOAD of Bloat get bundled in such a way that you can't fix anything without bundling the whole ball of wax. Why is this still done this way?
Why can't the manufacturers have a radio-blob a screen driver blob, a skin-blob, all handled like standard libraries, and leave the everything else to Android?
If I can switch from KDE to XFCE4 just by how i log in, why can't I do that on the phone?
If an update from my Linux distro can happen on the fly for most things, and a simple reboot for the kernel, why can't Android do the same?
Google should have drawn clear lines of demarcation, and maintained control of the android kernel and everything the manufacturers and carriers want should run as loadable modules.
That said, Android is nominally owned by the Android Alliance, and Google probably had to make concessions.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:39PM
Not having an Adobe-like reputation for security is important since all their stuff is online.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 06 2015, @01:48PM
Couldn't they implement updates for the core OS stuff in a similar manner to how they update apps, by using something the the Linux repository based model? As always, the ability to point to alternative repositories would be required for those that want to switch to alternative kernels, etc, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:03PM
I know for a fact that network operators make android upgrades a living hell for MVNOs probably to make their own overpriced overadvertised offerings look better.
Sprint would be pretty angry with Google if they couldn't make RW phones always behind the times.
There is a rather practical concern that other than shuffling things around to make experienced users angry, as a guy with 5.something on my nexus tablet I can't think of anything post-2.2 that I'm actually interested in. The advantages are all theoretical and extremely abstract for end users. Well, if I had any use for NFC, which I don't, then I'd care. In theory security could be tighter, or at least supposedly fewer security bugs have been created than patched, although I donno if thats anything more than optimistic thinking. If I bought an android watch that I don't want and would actively avoid buying but somehow was punished with one anyway then 5.1 would be quite handy compared to 2.2. Material design is ugly as hell, is that supposed to make me feel better that I can't upgrade? What I'm getting at is if you want end users to desire upgrading, you gotta give them a reason that appeals to them, not appeals to journalists looking for pix-heavy clickbait articles or software devs looking for another new mousetrap that does about the same old thing. Trying to get android end users to upgrade an android device is pushing on a string.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SDRefugee on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:17PM
I'm a retired network admin, and I refuse to tie myself down to a 2yr cellphone contract, so I buy my own phones from either eBay or Glyde, and use Ting as my carrier. Ting runs on Sprints network (for CDMA) and T-mobile (for GSM), and you only pay for what you use each month, post-paid..Once I have a phone working on the carrier, I root it, and clean off all of the bloatware that Sprint-branded phones insist on plaguing phones with. As for having the latest/greatest Android version, I usually put CyanogenMod on the phone, and its pretty much Android 3.X or sometimes 4.X.. Don't really care for the latest/greatest.. So sue me... :)
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:22PM
I'll rephrase my own post to its a push vs pull problem. The devs and marketing people are pushing as hard as they can for obvious financial reasons (Keep doing exactly the same thing you've always done, but send us money!) but the man in the street has no pull interest at all. Is there anything, anything at all, since android 2.2 or maybe earlier that a man in the street would care about? If the public has got no pull demand, no amount of marketing is going to push it onto them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:33PM
Well, there's the apps. If you want to use Instagram, for instance, you won't be able to use it on your Ice Cream Sandwich phone. It will install and run, it just won't work. They targeted Jelly Bean for Instagram version 5 and later, and it can't access the camera on anything earlier.
There are other popular apps with similar issues. But the app makers don't even advertise that fact.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:13PM
You're correct in the updates not really offering a lot, certainly very little that can't be implemented by apps. It's partly a marketing problem (iOS gets updates out to everybody, but they *need* them to do core changes, not that Android users should have to implement newer core features with apps if they want them), partly security (I would think we should see a lot more security updates for the OS than we do).
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday May 07 2015, @05:58AM
Even if you don't want any of the new features, the much faster Java VM is worth the upgrade. Improved memory and power management too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:35PM
Google is sort of already doing this by moving a lot of core functionality out of the open-source Android code into Google Play, which they can update. Whether that's a good thing or not is another matter.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:49PM
for all the 'credit' google gets around here, the big fuckup was that they ruined linux on the phone and made linux-on-phones a monolithic monster instead of the set of pieces that linux is and always will be.
in fact, google had to do WORK to make linux into the phone clusterfuck that it is now. I completely miss why they wanted to ruin the concept of upgradable-linux.
maybe they thought it would offer more lock-in and more control.
whatever the reason, android is flawed by very design and I can't wait for the next thing that replaces it.
phones are such a mess. and they really didn't have to be!
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Informative) by RedGreen on Wednesday May 06 2015, @03:49PM
Apparently have not heard of the systemd cluster fuck that has brought the windows monolithic method of doing things to Linux. Coming to a distro near you whether you want it or not.
"Cervantes definitely was prescient in describing a senile Don fighting against windmills." -- larryjoe on /.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:12PM
There is another side to this too. I have an LG G3 phone that I am really happy with. There is a 5.0 update available (maybe 5.1), but I am sticking with 4.4.2.
Why? Because I have so many tweaks and "hacks" that may not work as I want on the latest version. I am happy with my phone as it is.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:23PM
Also, the new Material UI.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:08PM
I would love to not spend a week dealing with the consequences of my mom's phone upgrading.
Guess what? The carriers think the same way, and they have a few million "moms" to deal with.
(Score: 2) by SuperCharlie on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:21PM
I have the same phone and did the upgrade. It didn't really straighten out till I did a hard reset after the OS update. I'm about a week or so in now on 5.0 and after all the reinstall, etc.. I like it marginally better.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday May 06 2015, @04:42PM
Is yours rooted with the screen DPI set to the correct value (534). It makes everything look much better
(Score: 3, Interesting) by everdred on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:21PM
I'm in the same boat as you. I have a modern Nexus phone that's had the Lollipop upgrade available for a good while, but I have no interest in upgrading from 4.4.4 anytime in the foreseeable future. I have Lollipop on another Nexus device and the UI, in my mind, is an incredible step backwards.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 06 2015, @06:33PM
Yes, exactly. I had a perfectly functional 3-yr old Nexus 7 tablet that I trustingly, stupidly "upgraded" to Lollipop, which instantly near bricked the damn thing. The performance went into the shitter, with me having to wait 1+ minute for a response to any tap on the screen. And for what? Turned out it was for eye-candy 3D animation effects. Fuck me. So after a longer than should have been amount of time googling after how to unfuck the device, I got to a couple sites that told you how to turn that "feature" off. OK, response time went down to 20 seconds or thereabouts. Plus the navigation iconography had completely changed. Apparently it makes perfect sense to you if you're a 13 year old boy who plays a lot of Playstation, but I have an XBox, not Playstation, and besides I have about 12 other Android devices that all share the previous navigation iconography. Again, it was all done because some Android UI designers thought it would be cute to re-imagine the standard interface as a video game metaphor.
I finally gave up and put CyanogenMod on it.
Google really screwed the pooch on that update, and I for one will not be doing it again. Though I was previously content to stay within their walled garden, because it was one less thing to think about and it was only on the tablets that I use only casually anyway, now I am a believer in fully owning every device down to the metal because it is not worth the aggravation of being at some jackass UI designer's mercy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:48PM
I have an old Nexus 7 too, which since the latest update, has been sitting around unused. The battery is probably dead now. The delay in response after touching just causes problems because you figure you need to press the button again. And my favored use for it -- watching poker videos on pokertube as I fall asleep with it attached to a flexible arm by my bed -- is impossible because the videos crap out after 3 or 4 minutes. Thinking it could be some app issue, I even a factory reset on it. Still the same useless results.
I hadn't thought of putting cyanogen mod on it though -- I'll have to figure that out because otherwise, it's just an ugly paperweight at this point.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 07 2015, @02:22AM
Exactly. One more thing to worry about, right? You use it casually for a couple of things and you run through the cost/benefit in your mind of figuring out how to un-fubar the thing, and you're loathe to.
Putting CyanogenMod on it wasn't as painful as I had imagined, and after much searching I got a theme that brought back the original navigation icons, but it certainly is more work than tapping "update" on Google Play.
The whole experience did erase any esteem I had for Google and it did nudge me several more notches in the direction of the FLOSS/Open Hardware universe, but lord there are only so many hours in the day. Should we really have to all build every bit of our hardware and software up from raw ore to be free of the inevitable corporate betrayals?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Sunday May 31 2015, @09:32AM
Should we really have to all build every bit of our hardware and software up from raw ore to be free of the inevitable corporate betrayals?
Well, yes.
Either there is profit into betraying consumers, and they will be betrayed, or there is no profit in betraying consumers, and attention is elsewhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @10:23PM
> Why? Because I have so many tweaks and "hacks" that may not work as I want on the latest version.
My wife has an iphone. She won't let it upgrade because one previous upgrade took away some functionality she cared about a lot, turned the upgrade into an ugg-parade. Apple makes it worse because they won't let you downgrade if you decide the new version sucks. So my point is that it doesn't even take geek-level hacks to make people upgrade averse, just fear that the manufacturer might remove standard functionality.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday May 06 2015, @11:36PM
+1 to this. You know that Google has run out of ideas when they start ripping off features from Windows
Oh, that new app view when you hit the... one button with the shape. You know, the shape that has absolutely nothing to do with its function? Yeah, that one. So, when you hit that and get a 3d view of all of your applications streaming by, just be sure to take the time to thank Windows Vista for Aero Flip.
Oh, and thank Vista for the animations everywhere.
And thank Vista for the relatively high RAM usage and low performance on current hardware.
And thank Vista for the needless re-arranging and arbitrary assignment of common functions to new things.
And thank Vista for the shit battery life.
And thank Vista for changing the way it runs programs enough to break compatibility with a slew of applications.
Screw it, I'll just cut to the chase and say that Lollipop is Google's Vista. It's flashy and nice looking, but in terms of raw feature improvements it comes up far short of the 4.x series.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday May 10 2015, @05:09AM
I have a Nexus 7 tablet from Google. I purposely don't live on my tablet because I figured something like that might happen. Sure enough, when the tablet upgraded itself from 4.X to 5.0, I lost everything. All my settings, all my data. It wiped everything. I did have two accounts set up on the tablet under one @gmail.com account and maybe that had something to do with it, but that is still unacceptable.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:23PM
Couldn't Google make it a requirement that for every phone it must be possible to install the original Google version of Android (possibly at the cost of losing carrier-specific features, but not at the cost of features supported by Android by default)? Then a carrier has two options:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:38PM
The reality is, Google wants device manufacturers who support Android to pay for the stuff in Google Play. So if Google made a stock Android with Google Play available, they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. If they made an Android without Google Play, no one would want it. So Google is sort of hoisting itself on its own petard as far as this goes. They can't supply a stock Android that has the stuff users really want, or they'd be destroying their own business model. Without Google Play, Android is not very exciting. (Ask Amazon how that Kindle app store is going.)
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @05:09PM
They could simply make the update support Google Play only if the previously installed version supported Google Play. Have the Google Play access information/code stored separately from the actual OS, so an OS update neither installs nor destroys it. The original OS doesn't contain enough information to use Google Play, but the OS upgrade with an original version doesn't destroy the information already present on the phone (and paid for by the manufacturer of the phone).
(Score: 1) by pmontra on Wednesday May 06 2015, @05:03PM
Why carriers? Carriers won't do updates themselves. They must ask manufacturers to do it. If a Samsung says it won't update an S3 anymore then what? No more Samsung? I don't believe so.
Then there are many phones not bought on a contract with a carrier but directly from manufacturers. My phone is one of them.
Google started moving many APIs inside the Google Play Services, which get regular updates. See https://developer.android.com/google/play-services/index.html [android.com]
"Devices running Android 2.3 or higher that have the Google Play Store app will automatically receive updates to Google Play services. Enhance your app with the most recent version of Google Play services without worrying about your users' Android version."
A big problem is the stock browser which is only updated with the OS. Google pulled an IE here and it bit them because the stock browser is the one used in the web views inside the apps and old browsers have lots of exploitable security holes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2015, @09:23AM
A big part of it is due to the hardware drivers. They need to be modified/written, debugged, tested and the whole thing recertified. Many Linux fanboys think this lack of interface stability/backward compatibility is a feature, binary blobs are bad and prefer encouraging the recompile/rewrite of drivers for new kernels (whereas with Windows XP you could have been running the same drivers for 10+ years through various updates and service packs, and an ever-growing zoo of malware for even longer ;) ). Well if your old drivers can't "Just Work(TM)" with the new kernel you'll just have to wait till the new ones are written. If the company has lost interest or gone bust well too fucking bad, you can go write them yourself (hey that's what many OSS fanboys keep saying). Keep in mind by the time you've finished writing them there might be a new incompatible kernel release, enjoy ;).
In contrast for stuff like Windows - it's likely that some crappy network card driver supplied by some long gone Taiwanese manufacturer will work as poorly on a fully updated Windows XP SP3 in 2013 as it did in on Windows XP in 2001.
Perhaps Google could teach more of the hardware bunch to do what Nvidia does for Linux (yes it's not perfect, but shows the problem right?), and make it easier.
See also: http://www.htc.com/us/go/htc-software-updates-process/ [htc.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:33PM
Android is a dumpster fire. Google is too busy messing up the Android user interface for them to care about anything practical. Google has always left Android in a permanent beta state, sloppy and buggy, as they've rushed on to new features without making the current stuff all that stable. Google does stupid stuff, like forcing developers who have native Android 4 apps to use the old-version compatibility library for Chromecast because some features require a compatibility library that Google wants people to stop using to support modern versions of Android. So the bottom line is, I like the fact that Android 4 is around to stay. We can freeze it for years to come. I don't want to rewrite old apps to look like Android 5. Especially since as soon as I do, Google will come up with a new UI for Android 6. Microsoft used to do the same thing, shuffling their look and feel every release, and the reason is to keep third-party developers scrambling to catch up rather than innovating new stuff. So I am happy with the fragmentation and lag time with devices supporting new Android releases. Anything to slow Google down. If Google had some way to update all Android devices, they'd probably change things even faster.
Android is #2 to iOS completely by default. It's not going away simply because no corporation would spend the money to develop a replacement when they could just take Android and fork it (like the original Nook and Kindle). Android is good job security, too, because few people want to learn to develop for it, and those who do go completely crazy in a few months.
Microsoft's new Android support looks underwhelming, BTW. They have an Android emulator of some sort they're building into Windows 10, but only on ARM devices. Even Google has an Intel-based emulator for Android. If MS wanted to do something big, they'd run Android apps with Google Play on the native Windows desktop. That would revolutionize Windows. If they just run Android apps without Google Play on their own ARM devices, no one will even notice.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday May 06 2015, @08:41PM
I'm using an original kindle fire with a newest nightly build of CyanogenMod now (4.4.4). In a case like this, because of the terribly slow (but supposed to be faster) "silk browser" this unit is much faster. I've noticed CyanogenMod has only released nightly builds since milestone12 dated 2014-11-12. Milestone12 would not work with the full blown gapps package. I had to use their small googleapps package to get play store working. The only bug I've found (this has happened on the milestone releases so this is an old bug) is sometimes the kindle won't wake on power button from sleep, requiring a hard reset. It occurs enough to be a nuisance, but still a better experience than factory.
I'd sure put 5.1 on here to try it (if they ever make it), but I'm not sure it would fit... even with the smaller gapps package.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fleg on Thursday May 07 2015, @08:27AM
i'd be interested to hear why that is. i spent the past year writing an ios app in swift, having never previously used xcode, nor had i ever written an app before. have to say it was an absolute joy, reminded me of why i like being a programmer. everything was just so easy. so i'm curious about the android experience.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday May 07 2015, @10:10AM
Why does Android drive you nuts? Android seems to have just happened with no planning or anything. The APIs for developers are a chaotic mess. The documentation often says one thing and the implementation does something else. Things like Chromecast are poorly designed. Time after time, you hit bizarre limits that make no sense, such as the default system search control for the action bar forcing you to use a database cursor instead of a more generic data structure, as if whoever designed it had never heard of AJAX.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by fleg on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:41AM
thanks for the info.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:57PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06 2015, @10:10PM
Screw needing the latest $500 phone just to use the latest Android User Observation And Tracking Platform. Palm Pre 2, here. WEB OS 2.0 on Page Plus for dirt cheap. It makes and receives calls and I can web browse and email, albeit in a limited way. I spend less that $150 per year for cell phone service and when I inevitably sit on the phone and break it, I can find a replacement for about $40 on Amazon.
Why the hell would anyone want to spend a couple grand a year just to keep Google and some cell carrier afloat?
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:31AM
Sheeple can't wakeup. There's no higher state to wake up to ;)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 07 2015, @12:36AM
There needs to be a way for computerphones ie "smart" phone users to change operating system to whatever they want. Current scheme tells users it voids warranty. It's all bullshit.
Signed code execution where you don't get to set your own signing key is hostile. And firmware that does the same is also hostile.
People: Root and reinstall with a real operating system that has a future..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @01:02AM
The biggest security hole in Android is the constant data leaks back to Google home base. Updates are less of a worry. Try running a firewall and locking down traffic to google servers; it's a total mess; calls moving your personal data, contacts, files and activity to Google all the time (even if you don't sign up for a google account).
Anything that breaks this walled garden is fine by me.