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Hardly surprising: an OS with a major revision number, released only 4 months prior (including the busy Christmas season), hasn't yet been tested-for-release by

by vacri 11y ago

Hardly surprising: an OS with a major revision number, released only 4 months prior (including the busy Christmas season), hasn't yet been tested-for-release by telcos and pushed into shops or upgrade servers, then finally filtered out to the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their phone and buying a new one (or rooting and upgrading their phone manually or abandoning their contract to get the marginal improvements over now-mature products). Must remember to write an article on this strange phenomenon.

zzalpha 11y ago
No kidding... To me, the real story is that if you cover off Kitkat and Lollipop, you've got 70% of the Android market. Add Jellybean to the mix and you've basically got the entire userbase covered. For a platform known for fragmentation, that's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.
- icefox 11y ago
  How do android developers deal with that? Do you only use APIs that came out before or with Jellybean?
  - zzalpha 11y ago
    In essence. This is easier than it sounds, though, as there are a number of support libraries out there that provide emulations of newer APIs for older versions of Android.
- realusername 11y ago
  There's also Android and Android, you need also to test for each popular product of Samsung since it's so different from stock and then hope there is no carrier-specific problem. And you also need test with a lot of different screens, but it's not like in web, you can't resize the emulator like this so it takes longer. Not trying to criticize, but it's still not easy to get an Android app to work mostly everywhere.
RHSeeger 11y ago
> the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their phone and buying a new one Or who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone every year. My phone (S3) is 3 years old and works fine. Why should I need to buy a new one?
- vlan0 11y ago
  vacri's comment made me chuckle. I do not understand why someone thinks it is an acceptable practice to force the replacement of adequate hardware due to the lack of software updates. When security should be a concern in this ecosystem, vacri tells users to root their phone and presumably either load some amatuer dev's ROM or port and compile their own. I just don't see any of that being helpful for the average user.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I do not understand why someone thinks it is an acceptable practice to force the replacement of adequate hardware due to the lack of software updates. That is not a fair summary of what they said.
    - vlan0 11y ago
      then finally filtered out to the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their phone and buying a new one (or>rooting and upgrading their phone manually or abandoning their contract to get the marginal improvements over now-mature products). This is the bulk of what I was referring to in the comment. The first line is a blatant attack against anyone who is not willing to part with their phone. By even telling users that is what they should do with their Android phone, the author is supporting this viscous cycle.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        I read that as sarcasm, it's making fun of the idea of writing a story about limited adoption after such a short time (and given the mentioned hurdles to switching), not actually mocking the 98.8%.

by vacri 11y ago

zzalpha 11y ago

No kidding... To me, the real story is that if you cover off Kitkat and Lollipop, you've got 70% of the Android market. Add Jellybean to the mix and you've basically got the entire userbase covered. For a platform known for fragmentation, that's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

icefox 11y ago
How do android developers deal with that? Do you only use APIs that came out before or with Jellybean?
- zzalpha 11y ago
  In essence. This is easier than it sounds, though, as there are a number of support libraries out there that provide emulations of newer APIs for older versions of Android.
realusername 11y ago
There's also Android and Android, you need also to test for each popular product of Samsung since it's so different from stock and then hope there is no carrier-specific problem. And you also need test with a lot of different screens, but it's not like in web, you can't resize the emulator like this so it takes longer. Not trying to criticize, but it's still not easy to get an Android app to work mostly everywhere.

RHSeeger 11y ago

> the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their phone and buying a new one Or who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone every year. My phone (S3) is 3 years old and works fine. Why should I need to buy a new one?

vlan0 11y ago
vacri's comment made me chuckle. I do not understand why someone thinks it is an acceptable practice to force the replacement of adequate hardware due to the lack of software updates. When security should be a concern in this ecosystem, vacri tells users to root their phone and presumably either load some amatuer dev's ROM or port and compile their own. I just don't see any of that being helpful for the average user.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  I do not understand why someone thinks it is an acceptable practice to force the replacement of adequate hardware due to the lack of software updates. That is not a fair summary of what they said.
  - vlan0 11y ago
    then finally filtered out to the lazy 98.8% who couldn't be bothered disposing of their phone and buying a new one (or>rooting and upgrading their phone manually or abandoning their contract to get the marginal improvements over now-mature products). This is the bulk of what I was referring to in the comment. The first line is a blatant attack against anyone who is not willing to part with their phone. By even telling users that is what they should do with their Android phone, the author is supporting this viscous cycle.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      I read that as sarcasm, it's making fun of the idea of writing a story about limited adoption after such a short time (and given the mentioned hurdles to switching), not actually mocking the 98.8%.