Article refrains from drawing conclusions, instead presenting the data. Android is doing better at moving users to newer versions, but the overwhelming majority of users don’t have the current Android OS version nor the previous version, combined.
Article refrains from drawing conclusions, instead presenting the data. Android is doing better at moving users to newer versions, but the overwhelming majority of users don’t have the current Android OS version nor the previous version, combined.
I’d really like someone to do an in-depth, but easy to understand, investigation into how much monthly system security updates and version upgrades actually contribute to the overall security of Android post-Mainline. There are so many different opinions about this online but very few are actually backed up by evidence. I genuinely don’t give a shit about running behind on Android versions now from a features perspective, there is so little difference between them for my use case, but it does concern me that so many manufacturers are still miles behind on security patches and that newer versions of Android may contain significant security improvements. I’m not sure if that’s actually a relevant concern though or if I’m being overly paranoid. How much does the user’s behaviour contribute to security versus the policies of the manufacturer? I have so many questions about this topic but it never seems to get any detailed coverage beyond “bigger number is better”.
Quite curious too
Improvement is definitely happening in the form of closing reported or discovered security holes, but in terms of security architecture and updating the design to be more resistant to unknown bugs? Android hasn’t changed much in the past few years.
While the new features may not matter to you, it makes devices much harder to develop for. This is one reason why Android versions of apps are worse compared to the same app on iOS.
But like you, security updates are very important to me. If I were ever going to switch to Android, I’d only consider getting a pixel. And I won’t consider that until it has a native desktop mode so I can essentially use it as my pc.
I watched a random video recently where an iPhone user tried to use an Android phone (a Z Flip 5) for a week and was surprised by how significant some of the differences between apps were. Like Instagram had entire features completely missing on Android that really annoyed her. Having never used Instagram, I had no idea feature parity was still that bad between the two operating systems when it came to mainstream apps like that. However, it’s understandable I’d be so out of the loop because basically all my apps for the last few years have been FOSS and exclusive to Android and no one I know owns an iPhone so there has been no direct comparison for me to make.
Are they worse? This seems outdated, but then, I haven’t used an iOS phone as a daily driver, so maybe there’s some magic making the iOS version of Google Maps so much better? I mean, it is true that it’s harder to make Android apps, but a lot of that has to do with displays being arbitrary aspect ratios and resolutions across dozens of devices, more than anything else, at least if you’re focusing on mainstream devices.
On the other issue, why not go Samsung? They are matching Google’s “7 years of updates” thing and they DO have a pretty solid native desktop mode. There are reasons I don’t use Samsung devices these days for other reasons, but if that’s the bar, I think they’re meeting it.
Yeah, not just worse quality but also some apps don’t come to Android until months later.
Linus from tech tips has complained that the Android version of YouTube is missing features that iOS has.
Another commenter mentioned that someone did a switch to Android challenge and Instagram was missing features.
A chatgpt competitor has had an app for iOS for months and Android just got it, I think something similar happened with chatgpt.
It’s not just arbitrary screen size, it’s about with wide variety of specs that need to be supported. Your app needs to work on a crappy modern Android with a slow cpu and limited ram as well as the flagship stuff, its easier for the devs to make a one size fits all app instead of expanding how some features only work on some phones and keep track of all that.
Additionally, newer versions of Android will have better and more capable apis. But if only 12% of people are on the latest version of Android, then coding the app to use those apis would either break the app on old version of Android or they would have to have code for doing a task an old I efficient way and a newer better way. So they just do it the I efficient way.