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Has Google ever released a report on how much time it takes an average flagship device to get the latest android version? Even if you've paid $$$$ in getting Sa

by amrrs 9y ago

Has Google ever released a report on how much time it takes an average flagship device to get the latest android version? Even if you've paid $$$$ in getting Samsung Galaxy S8 just recently, you're not going to get Android O tomorrow morning. But that's definitely the case with iOS. That makes a huge difference in the world where Software updates play a huge role in performance and functionality than hardware update (read. Image processing vs 13Mp to 16Mp camera) Google hasn't been successful in that.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Vertical integration has its advantages. Also, due to people buying new phones every 6 months those seem to be the two things that disincentivze Android phone makers to not do those things.
- bluGill 9y ago
  You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. Maybe you cannot get the latest, but when you support the companies that support their phones for more than a few months you support that business model which in turn ensures that someone who updates their phones exists. You might have to leave the major names behind, and might have to skip a few features. Do you need the latest and greatest anymore though? When Android was new (2008) CPUs were much slower and upgrades did help your experience. (I remember missing calls because my phone couldn't switch to the phone app quick enough).
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    > You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. I cannot change that. The ~5,000 I have spent on smartphones and laptops in the past 10 years is hardly enough. My buying choice, yours, and the GP's are just not strong and valuable enough to cause a manufacturer to pander to our desires. The economies of scale and the greater money available from the opposite are so bad that no one even makes an expensive phone to capture our tiny segment of the market. They all chase the thinner, glued-up, bloatware-filled, non-repairable, closed-source, 2-year-or-less buyers. Same story on laptops. In fact, my purchases seem to have the opposite effect: the Nexus is now as expensive as any other flagship. Motorola's cheap stock Android phone line shut down. LG stopped installing removable batteries. MacBook Pros still have nice hardware, but they are completely glued up. Thinkpads still have crappy stock screens.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      That's not really true on Laptops. Apple, Lenovo, and Dell all make sturdy high-end upgradable repairable laptops. Not the kinds of products you'll see at your local West Fry though.
      - artimaeis 9y ago
        I'm a huge fan of Apple products in general - and firmly believe their laptops are the best on the market. But there's incredibly little ground to call any of their current laptop lineup upgradable or repairable. I'm not sure there's a single upgradeable component left on any laptop they currently offer. The Macbook and the Macbook Pro have both moved to soldered CPU, RAM, and flash memory. The Macbook Air I believe still has a replaceable SSD but it has the proprietary connectory. To further complicate things - the batteries in the Macbook and Macbook Pro are both heavily glued in, so even that's difficult to replace.
      - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
        I've worked with a Lenovo T60, a W520, a T430, and checked out the T560. They are steadily getting less repairable.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. Who would those be? And who of those is not on the high end phablet side of the phone market?
izacus 9y ago
Just like you have to buy an Apple phone to get Apple updates immediately, you need to buy a Google phone to get Google updates immediately. Pixel and Nexus rollout is starting nowish (and beta participants are already getting the OTAs). This is really not a secret at this time anymore and should be taken into account when you succumb to Samsung marketing. Everybody else will be probably 4-6 months late.
- putlake 9y ago
  But Apple supports iPhones for 4-5 years. Google has said they will only support their flagship Nexus and Pixel phones for no more than 2 years. For a $700 device this is unacceptable.
  - Ironlink 9y ago
    That's not entirely true: Pixel phones get security updates for at least 3 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store, or at least 18 months from when the Google Store last sold the device, whichever is longer. https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705
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  - victorhooi 9y ago
    Apart from what Ironlink said below, there's also the fact that Google and Apple support mean different things. For Apple, updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version. Whereas Google updates tend to be all of nothing - meaning if your phone does get the update, it gets all of the features of that particular version. This seems to have changed somewhat with moving a lot of the stuff to Play Service (and now obviously with Project Treble), so you get the best of both world (in theory)...
jpm_sd 9y ago
Typically it's somewhere between 12 and Infinity months
hdhzy 9y ago
That's the common thinking that if you don't have latest Android it's a problem. But some manufacturers like Samsung push security updates monthly even for old devices such as Note 4. They do have many features years before the stock Android gets them (e.g. aptX, multiwindow or even Android O "tooltips" were in Note 4 when it was announced). So what exactly is the benefit of having everyone use the same exact, latest version? I most certainly would not switch to stock if that meant degarding my "experience" w.r.t. other features. "Be together. Not the same."
- willtim 9y ago
  This is spot on. In fact, for most users Lollipop brought lag and excessive battery drain for little user benefit.
dingo_bat 9y ago
Another point of view is you don't need an update if you bought a galaxy S8. It already has everything important and many more features. In fact, S7 actually regressed by updating to N. The multi window feature was perfectly stable and feature rich and most apps supported it. Google forced Samsung to replace it with their rudimentary implementation. Now it lacks features, is much slower, full of glitches and even after one year there are fewer apps that support it. At this point I'd rather Samsung keep sending monthly security updates and forgo on Google's OS update altogether.
ryan-allen 9y ago
When I used to have iPhones, every software update degraded performance, until eventually, an update would make the phone so unbearable to use you had to buy a new one.
piyush_soni 9y ago
Running Nexus 6P with Android Beta Program enabled. Got the stable Android Oreo in a couple of hours of the release.

by amrrs 9y ago

zitterbewegung 9y ago

Vertical integration has its advantages. Also, due to people buying new phones every 6 months those seem to be the two things that disincentivze Android phone makers to not do those things.

bluGill 9y ago
You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. Maybe you cannot get the latest, but when you support the companies that support their phones for more than a few months you support that business model which in turn ensures that someone who updates their phones exists. You might have to leave the major names behind, and might have to skip a few features. Do you need the latest and greatest anymore though? When Android was new (2008) CPUs were much slower and upgrades did help your experience. (I remember missing calls because my phone couldn't switch to the phone app quick enough).
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  > You can change that: don't buy a new phone every six months, and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. I cannot change that. The ~5,000 I have spent on smartphones and laptops in the past 10 years is hardly enough. My buying choice, yours, and the GP's are just not strong and valuable enough to cause a manufacturer to pander to our desires. The economies of scale and the greater money available from the opposite are so bad that no one even makes an expensive phone to capture our tiny segment of the market. They all chase the thinner, glued-up, bloatware-filled, non-repairable, closed-source, 2-year-or-less buyers. Same story on laptops. In fact, my purchases seem to have the opposite effect: the Nexus is now as expensive as any other flagship. Motorola's cheap stock Android phone line shut down. LG stopped installing removable batteries. MacBook Pros still have nice hardware, but they are completely glued up. Thinkpads still have crappy stock screens.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    That's not really true on Laptops. Apple, Lenovo, and Dell all make sturdy high-end upgradable repairable laptops. Not the kinds of products you'll see at your local West Fry though.
    - artimaeis 9y ago
      I'm a huge fan of Apple products in general - and firmly believe their laptops are the best on the market. But there's incredibly little ground to call any of their current laptop lineup upgradable or repairable. I'm not sure there's a single upgradeable component left on any laptop they currently offer. The Macbook and the Macbook Pro have both moved to soldered CPU, RAM, and flash memory. The Macbook Air I believe still has a replaceable SSD but it has the proprietary connectory. To further complicate things - the batteries in the Macbook and Macbook Pro are both heavily glued in, so even that's difficult to replace.
    - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
      I've worked with a Lenovo T60, a W520, a T430, and checked out the T560. They are steadily getting less repairable.
- flukus 9y ago
  > and buy from a maker that supports your phone longer. Who would those be? And who of those is not on the high end phablet side of the phone market?

izacus 9y ago

Just like you have to buy an Apple phone to get Apple updates immediately, you need to buy a Google phone to get Google updates immediately. Pixel and Nexus rollout is starting nowish (and beta participants are already getting the OTAs). This is really not a secret at this time anymore and should be taken into account when you succumb to Samsung marketing. Everybody else will be probably 4-6 months late.

putlake 9y ago
But Apple supports iPhones for 4-5 years. Google has said they will only support their flagship Nexus and Pixel phones for no more than 2 years. For a $700 device this is unacceptable.
- Ironlink 9y ago
  That's not entirely true: Pixel phones get security updates for at least 3 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store, or at least 18 months from when the Google Store last sold the device, whichever is longer. https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705 https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- victorhooi 9y ago
  Apart from what Ironlink said below, there's also the fact that Google and Apple support mean different things. For Apple, updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version. Whereas Google updates tend to be all of nothing - meaning if your phone does get the update, it gets all of the features of that particular version. This seems to have changed somewhat with moving a lot of the stuff to Play Service (and now obviously with Project Treble), so you get the best of both world (in theory)...

jpm_sd 9y ago

Typically it's somewhere between 12 and Infinity months

hdhzy 9y ago

That's the common thinking that if you don't have latest Android it's a problem. But some manufacturers like Samsung push security updates monthly even for old devices such as Note 4. They do have many features years before the stock Android gets them (e.g. aptX, multiwindow or even Android O "tooltips" were in Note 4 when it was announced). So what exactly is the benefit of having everyone use the same exact, latest version? I most certainly would not switch to stock if that meant degarding my "experience" w.r.t. other features. "Be together. Not the same."

willtim 9y ago
This is spot on. In fact, for most users Lollipop brought lag and excessive battery drain for little user benefit.

dingo_bat 9y ago

Another point of view is you don't need an update if you bought a galaxy S8. It already has everything important and many more features. In fact, S7 actually regressed by updating to N. The multi window feature was perfectly stable and feature rich and most apps supported it. Google forced Samsung to replace it with their rudimentary implementation. Now it lacks features, is much slower, full of glitches and even after one year there are fewer apps that support it. At this point I'd rather Samsung keep sending monthly security updates and forgo on Google's OS update altogether.

ryan-allen 9y ago

When I used to have iPhones, every software update degraded performance, until eventually, an update would make the phone so unbearable to use you had to buy a new one.

piyush_soni 9y ago

Running Nexus 6P with Android Beta Program enabled. Got the stable Android Oreo in a couple of hours of the release.