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Meta-ish: to attain coverage from 95% of Android devices, you have to support 7.0 ("Nougat"), which dates back to August 2016 (~7 years ago): * https://en.wiki

Meta-ish: to attain coverage from 95% of Android devices, you have to support 7.0 ("Nougat"), which dates back to August 2016 (~7 years ago): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Nougat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Nougat To attain coverage of 95% of iOS devices, you have to support iOS 14 which dates back to September 2020 (~3 years ago): * https://iosref.com/ios-usage https://iosref.com/ios-usage * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_14 Even for 'only' 90% coverage, it's 8.1 (2017) versus iOS 15 (2021). Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system.

paxys 3y ago
> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Apple isn't selling $10 phones in developing countries. If you compare phones at the same price points from major manufacturers/carriers the difference won't be nearly as drastic.
- redox99 3y ago
  Meh. Samsung (and Huawei) are still the best selling phones in developing countries. Samsung could definitely both reduce the unnecessarily large number of SKUs, and better unify their software stack so they could update for 5 years all of their phones. It's crazy how we went from PCs having the right abstractions, where you can easily keep a 10 year old PC updated, to this awful Android situation.
  - paxys 3y ago
    They are not. Samsung is #1 but after that there is a very long tail of Android smartphone manufacturers that most people in western countries haven't even heard of. Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo for example all have double digit market shares globally, and combined sell more than Samsung. Realme and ZTE have >5%. The "others" section in most graphs is >30%. If you narrow down the price to say <$100 there is an even larger spread. Expecting continued multi-year support from manufacturers and carriers is impossible at this range when the sole focus is on driving down the price and nothing else.
    - redox99 3y ago
      Sure. I don't know enough about those companies so I'm not complaining about them. But I know Samsung has the money and manpower to drastically improve the situation, yet they don't care. With the right abstractions, they would only have a single version of "Samsung OS", like you only have a single version of Windows/Ubuntu. And all devices within reason would be able to immediately update to the latest version of Samsung OS, like PCs can.
      - paxys 3y ago
        Go to a developing country and see the share of PCs that are running Windows XP and you will realize that things aren't that simple. The majority of the world doesn't care about OS updates, and they are definitely not spending money on it. They simply want stuff to continue to work exactly as it did when they bought it. Mobile phones already get updated at a much higher rate than PCs. The vast majority of PCs in the world stay on the version that the manufacturer installed throughout their lifetime. And say in your example Samsung does get its shit together and spends a ton of money to upgrade every phone in the world...that's still ~25-30% of the Android population. What about the rest?
        redox99 3y ago
        I already live in a developing country lol
        pdpi 3y ago
        The situation is understandable for budget phones sold in developing countries, but that's almost entirely irrelevant to what companies like Samsung and Google do for their flagship products.
        rkagerer 3y ago
        They simply want stuff to continue to work exactly as it did when they bought it. My hammer can do this but I have never had a smartphone that achieved it.
        bombolo 3y ago
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Classic popular=/= Good Samsung is garbage tier and on my list of Never Buy. They have big marketing campaigns and their phones at max brightness with a cool default wallpaper. The crapware is annoying and the performance is average at best. I feel its my duty to warn people about Samsung.
    - stOneskull 3y ago
      they can be good but i think they're too expensive. oppo is pretty equivalent but half the price.
  - KronisLV 3y ago
    > It's crazy how we went from PCs having the right abstractions, where you can easily keep a 10 year old PC updated, to this awful Android situation. I feel like TPM and some modern OSes and software requiring it would like a word in that regard. :( But yes, it feels like PCs are generally more open to both updates and running different OSes instead of smartphones getting turned into e-waste because of the more closed ecosystem (drivers, bootloaders, support).
- nerdbert 3y ago
  Both of the Android phones I bought (not particularly cheap ones) were unsupported with new updates within three years. Never again.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    Yep. The "median" Android phone is abandoned by the manufacturer within a few years, and sometimes doesn't even see a major OS update. Given the variety of available models, projects like LineageOS can't even keep up with providing an alternative.
- dan-robertson 3y ago
  I don’t know about percentages but I looked up Samsung galaxy phones[1], assuming that would be reasonably fair towards your claim (similar price points, etc). I observe: - support lifetimes are better than before (now at 4 years by standard). - but they don’t match up well with versions, eg the S8 support ended earlier this year running an android major version from 2018 (four and a half years earlier), the S9 will[2] stop later this year with a major version that will be four years old, the S10 stops next year with a major version that will be 3 years old. That’s just what is available rather than what actually runs on existing devices. For comparison, everything from the iPhone 8 onwards (released nearly 6 years ago) can run the latest OS version, much of it does, and some older hardware still gets the occasional security update. My understanding of the android ecosystem is that pixel phones are much more likely to be updated than iPhones, though they’re at a lower price point which is why I didn’t look into them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series [2] I may be misreading the table here. It could be that the column is ‘current latest version’ and might change before the EOL date.
  - organsnyder 3y ago
    > My understanding of the android ecosystem is that pixel phones are much more likely to be updated than iPhones I don't remember the specifics, but I migrated to iOS after being appalled at how quickly my Pixel phone was losing OS updates, including security updates. IIRC, it was due to lose updates after it was less than three years old.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      Yeah but iPhones are the least secure phones. You might get 6 years of security, but the amount of 0 click exploits that were seen in the wild have caused death(Khashoggi at a minimum) and nude leaks(Bezos). Its security theatre.
      - bombolo 3y ago
        https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/warning-issued-for-iphone-users-as-ongoing-imessage-0-click-attack-revealed/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/warning-...
- OtherShrezzing 3y ago
  I've got a 2017 flagship Samsung Galaxy, and it only ever received 1 update in 2018 - so it was considered defunct by Samsung before my contract even expired. The earlier iPhone 7 it replaced got major version update support to 2021, and still gets minor patches, including one a couple of weeks ago. Even comparing like-for-like on flagship products, the androids perform poorly when it comes to Long Term Support.
latchkey 3y ago
> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. For me, it is the improved cameras.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  I get why this currently appears downvoted, but I do think this is a real factor. The camera improvements in particular drive device sales and keep people on a software upgrade treadmill whether they’d update their older devices or not.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    To me the camera is probably the least important concern I have with a phone. I don't think I've used my camera yet this month. I would trade a camera for a smaller phone with better battery life.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    That has reached some limits in the last few cycles, in my view. The cameras are almost all good enough for almost all users and the only place anyone cares now are the people with a grand to blow for very minor improvements, a fraction of the audience for the fraction of phone sales at the top end. Look down market even slightly and the cameras on today's upper and middle mid-range or the those on a two or three year old hero phone poll exceptionally well with users today. Sensors, lens packs, and OIS are good enough and cheap enough for even very low light situations and everything else is software (or perhaps some new hardware as we get more ruin like "A.I." enhancements like portrait mode -- God damn if I have to see another photo with that exaggerated depth of field I'm gonna kick something, but even those effects don't need this years model as the hardware and software for that have filtered out over the last 7 years. I think we're really at the end for the "I need (or even want) the new phone for a better camera." (note Samsung and others marketing moves to streaming and astrophotography as "normal" photos that most people care about are simply good enough.) Perhaps something more computationally challenging like live deep fake video and things like that will drive sales going forward and that's "camera" sure (but also that AI chip) but photography, pictures, IMO, has reached a plateau and nothing exciting has happened enough yet in video to replace "outrageously better pictures" as as a that now fading upgrade cycle driver. I think battery (and weight considerations) could be drivers in the near future. Fast charging, IMO, has been a bigger driver of revenue for phone makers than cameras for the last few years and I suspect we'll see marketing and user demand shifting to "does your phone run for a week without bending your spine" or "does your phone charge in under a minute" something like that becoming a focus in 3-5 years and cameras falling down to compete with things like cover glass which has also plateaued and mostly fallen off the users radar. Apple's rumored battery and size bump and the EU's move to consumer replaceable batteries is a perfect storm for super fast charging, even at destructive levels, then OEM or 7-11 sales of replacement batteries. I imagine we'll also see optimizations in the rest of the hardware and software stack become a focus for that magical week of battery that's probably not a decade away. Photography, like cover glass, is bound by some pretty daunting constraints of physics and I think we've hit "good as it's gonna get" or "good enough" or some combination of those for a while and so phone makers need something new to drive their annual or biannual upgrade cycles. Apple hopes VR will be big and replace a lot of phone and pc use cases, perhaps the way the iPhone and iPad did so much of that 15 years ago, but I don't see that happening for another decade or three (I've used various head mounted VR kits since 1993; it's not happening any time soon.) Android is too fragmented to say what that ecosystem is betting on over the next 5 years or so, but I'm gonna wager it's battery and screen followed by performance, camera, and then storage, durability and IP rating and all those other "a few small but big spending segments care enough to keep improving" features.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Much simpler than that: Apple doesn't allow third parties to make iPhones, while Google allows third parties to make Android phones. Devices don't get updated because manufacturers stop providing updates for them.
- alwillis 3y ago
  > > Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Apple is doing a better job with operating system updates. On June 21, Apple released a bunch of iOS updates including iOS 15.7.7 [1] for devices going back to the iPhone 6s which was released September 2015--nearly 8 years ago. There's no reason why the large Android OEMs couldn't do the same if they wanted to. And that's with 81% of iPhone bought in the last 4 years running a version of iOS 16 [2] five months ago. When iOS 17 is available to be installed in two months, over 90% the installed base will be running iOS 16. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811 [2]: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/16/ios-16-adoption-stats-from-apple https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/16/ios-16-adoption-stats-f...
  - folkrav 3y ago
    I think OP's point was that Google/Android don't have much to do with OEMs choosing to update their older devices or not.
    - tadfisher 3y ago
      They do, actually, via the Open Handset Alliance and Google Play. They are tied by what Qualcomm is willing to deliver in their BSPs, and that's basically 2 years of Linux LTS kernels. So the minimum support level is 3 years; two Android versions and one year of security patches. Samsung and Google can do 5 years of support because of Exynos/Tensor, and Samsung basically spends the money to support older Qualcomm devices themselves.
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Almost all of the things that ios brings with update could be done with an android app update. I have been using ios since ios 9 and my usage is exactly the same since both in ipad and iphone: swipe or search for the app you want and use it. I would be more concerned about security updates though. What percentage of ios and android have all security updates released say t-7 days before applied?
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  This is probably a big part of why people don’t generally opt out of iOS upgrades: they’re basically just annual app upgrades packaged together (notwithstanding some pretty conspicuous Safari updates in recent point releases), anything OS level is mostly iteration on a mostly stable core and has been for almost a decade. I do think they could and should be more aggressive with security updates. Both by releasing/messaging those separately from other kinds of point releases (improving but not great), and by notifying sooner/more frequently. It definitely irks me when I find out about a critical security patch over a week after it was available, and that the security content is a secondary link with no immediate conveyance of its urgency. And they should also make it a lot more obvious how to go find out if an update is even available in the first place. Even today(?)’s rapid response, I had to read about it on some site and then remember the incantation to go look to see if the update was available. Of course it was, so I tapped download and install. After waiting a while, I switched to another thing. When I came back, it was downloaded and ready and waiting for another affirmative to do the thing I already requested. I should not need to do any of this when I have automatic updates on.
  - alwillis 3y ago
    > I do think they could and should be more aggressive with security updates. Both by releasing/messaging those separately from other kinds of point releases (improving but not great), and by notifying sooner/more frequently. Normies usually have their updates set to automatic, so they get the updates a soon as they're out. I count over 9 security updates for iOS 16 [1] as of July 10th, with the rest of the year to go. I feel like as soon as any type of update is released by Apple, I'm inundated with the news from many websites, RSS feeds and the PGP-signed email from Apple with the news [2] [3]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 [2]: security-announce@lists.apple.com [3]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201214 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201214
toast0 3y ago
Regardless of OS upgrades, which Google and device manufacturers collaboratively do a terrible job with, there's no reason the CA bundle should be tied to the OS version. Curl's ca bundle page says the mozilla bundle is about 200KB uncompressed, and my Android says the Chrome App is 25 MB, so a 1% increase in app size seems reasonable to keep things current. Certainly, other apps might also want updated CAs, too, but do they need all of them, or only the CAs they might actually use?
- CaliforniaKarl 3y ago
  > there's no reason the CA bundle should be tied to the OS version. This is covered in TFA: > …especially as Android releases version 14, which has the ability to update its trust store without a full OS update.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Yes, that's going to be relevant in about 7 years. In the meantime, Google should just include a trust store in their browser. Of course, project Treble was supposed to save us by now. IMHO, Google really should work on reducing the OS to the minimum needed, and make it possible for apps to share dependencies. If App A and App B use the same X, it doesn't really need to be downloaded and stored twice. For X including CA bundles, libraries, etc. Then you push play store publishers to update libraries and what not to what is commonly installed.
    - jart 3y ago
      I like to build portable static executables, so I embed the CA roots in every executable I build that needs to talk HTTPS. It'd be great if there weren't so many mom and pop shops in the certificate authority business. It just boggles my mind how the Internet hasn't fallen apart, considering the only thing you have to do is compromise something like a printing shop in France that runs a CA as a side hustle.
      - asadotzler 3y ago
myko 3y ago
And yet Android devices that are 7 years old get the latest & greatest APIs, whereas I won't be able to use the new OSLog functionality built into the iOS 17 SDK for 3 years
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  The Android compatibility libraries are a godsend. Sure, your users won't run the latest version of Android for a year or two at least, but you can use almost every new Android feature the moment it's presented and it'll work out of the box for the vast majority of your users. Want to use a modern web engine but your customers are running a seven year old OS? No problem, the webview updates come AUTOMATICALLY. Want to integrate with Google's new nearby share mechanism? It's already present on the same devices. Google's cloud API changed as part of a recent Android update? No matter, every API feature has already been working on every outdated phone since before you even know there was going to be a problem. You do end up with annoying clutter supporting all of these devices because of API/permission changes, but it's all quite easy to deal with if you just stuff the compat code away behind an abstraction.
kelnos 3y ago
It's a lot easier to keep your customers' older devices up to date when you control the entire hardware and software stack on them. Google really has very little say if some random low-end manufacturer doesn't feel like updating their customers. Sure, they can try to require that they provide updates for a certain amount of time in order to get and keep their Android certification, but at some point they'll just give up and ditch Android entirely. And on top of that, Qualcomm just won't provide updated kernels and blobs for their older chipsets after a while. Google has managed to negotiate them up from their pathetic 18 months that it used to be, but Qualcomm still doen't have to play ball any further if they don't want to. And Google's making their own chipsets now, so they care a little bit less about that problem. Not saying it's great, but that's just how it is. Android's model basically means it's just going to be that way. Apple's means they get more control over such things.
INTPenis 3y ago
>Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Yes it's called planned obsolescence and nature ain't thanking them.
mrweasel 3y ago
It really weird that given everything these days needs to be a subscription, why isn't someone building a relatively cheap phone, with a yearly subscription to keep software update coming. Other than a smallish group if tech enthusiasts and people who consider phones fashion, I argue that most are perfectly happy with their 2020 iPhone or 2018 Android phone. They are clearly not replacing them as fast as the industry expects, so may a small fee for updates, so you avoid having to replace the phone would be acceptable.
zulban 3y ago
> better job of convincing / allowing Not having old phones on your platform is a failure, not a success. Old Android phones still work okay. Apple isn't giving away free new phones - there is no right to repair.

paxys 3y ago

> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Apple isn't selling $10 phones in developing countries. If you compare phones at the same price points from major manufacturers/carriers the difference won't be nearly as drastic.

redox99 3y ago
Meh. Samsung (and Huawei) are still the best selling phones in developing countries. Samsung could definitely both reduce the unnecessarily large number of SKUs, and better unify their software stack so they could update for 5 years all of their phones. It's crazy how we went from PCs having the right abstractions, where you can easily keep a 10 year old PC updated, to this awful Android situation.
- paxys 3y ago
  They are not. Samsung is #1 but after that there is a very long tail of Android smartphone manufacturers that most people in western countries haven't even heard of. Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo for example all have double digit market shares globally, and combined sell more than Samsung. Realme and ZTE have >5%. The "others" section in most graphs is >30%. If you narrow down the price to say <$100 there is an even larger spread. Expecting continued multi-year support from manufacturers and carriers is impossible at this range when the sole focus is on driving down the price and nothing else.
  - redox99 3y ago
    Sure. I don't know enough about those companies so I'm not complaining about them. But I know Samsung has the money and manpower to drastically improve the situation, yet they don't care. With the right abstractions, they would only have a single version of "Samsung OS", like you only have a single version of Windows/Ubuntu. And all devices within reason would be able to immediately update to the latest version of Samsung OS, like PCs can.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Go to a developing country and see the share of PCs that are running Windows XP and you will realize that things aren't that simple. The majority of the world doesn't care about OS updates, and they are definitely not spending money on it. They simply want stuff to continue to work exactly as it did when they bought it. Mobile phones already get updated at a much higher rate than PCs. The vast majority of PCs in the world stay on the version that the manufacturer installed throughout their lifetime. And say in your example Samsung does get its shit together and spends a ton of money to upgrade every phone in the world...that's still ~25-30% of the Android population. What about the rest?
      - redox99 3y ago
        I already live in a developing country lol
      - pdpi 3y ago
        The situation is understandable for budget phones sold in developing countries, but that's almost entirely irrelevant to what companies like Samsung and Google do for their flagship products.
      - rkagerer 3y ago
        They simply want stuff to continue to work exactly as it did when they bought it. My hammer can do this but I have never had a smartphone that achieved it.
      - bombolo 3y ago
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Classic popular=/= Good Samsung is garbage tier and on my list of Never Buy. They have big marketing campaigns and their phones at max brightness with a cool default wallpaper. The crapware is annoying and the performance is average at best. I feel its my duty to warn people about Samsung.
  - stOneskull 3y ago
    they can be good but i think they're too expensive. oppo is pretty equivalent but half the price.
- KronisLV 3y ago
  > It's crazy how we went from PCs having the right abstractions, where you can easily keep a 10 year old PC updated, to this awful Android situation. I feel like TPM and some modern OSes and software requiring it would like a word in that regard. :( But yes, it feels like PCs are generally more open to both updates and running different OSes instead of smartphones getting turned into e-waste because of the more closed ecosystem (drivers, bootloaders, support).
nerdbert 3y ago
Both of the Android phones I bought (not particularly cheap ones) were unsupported with new updates within three years. Never again.
- rollcat 3y ago
  Yep. The "median" Android phone is abandoned by the manufacturer within a few years, and sometimes doesn't even see a major OS update. Given the variety of available models, projects like LineageOS can't even keep up with providing an alternative.
dan-robertson 3y ago
I don’t know about percentages but I looked up Samsung galaxy phones[1], assuming that would be reasonably fair towards your claim (similar price points, etc). I observe: - support lifetimes are better than before (now at 4 years by standard). - but they don’t match up well with versions, eg the S8 support ended earlier this year running an android major version from 2018 (four and a half years earlier), the S9 will[2] stop later this year with a major version that will be four years old, the S10 stops next year with a major version that will be 3 years old. That’s just what is available rather than what actually runs on existing devices. For comparison, everything from the iPhone 8 onwards (released nearly 6 years ago) can run the latest OS version, much of it does, and some older hardware still gets the occasional security update. My understanding of the android ecosystem is that pixel phones are much more likely to be updated than iPhones, though they’re at a lower price point which is why I didn’t look into them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_series [2] I may be misreading the table here. It could be that the column is ‘current latest version’ and might change before the EOL date.
- organsnyder 3y ago
  > My understanding of the android ecosystem is that pixel phones are much more likely to be updated than iPhones I don't remember the specifics, but I migrated to iOS after being appalled at how quickly my Pixel phone was losing OS updates, including security updates. IIRC, it was due to lose updates after it was less than three years old.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Yeah but iPhones are the least secure phones. You might get 6 years of security, but the amount of 0 click exploits that were seen in the wild have caused death(Khashoggi at a minimum) and nude leaks(Bezos). Its security theatre.
    - bombolo 3y ago
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/warning-issued-for-iphone-users-as-ongoing-imessage-0-click-attack-revealed/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/warning-...
OtherShrezzing 3y ago
I've got a 2017 flagship Samsung Galaxy, and it only ever received 1 update in 2018 - so it was considered defunct by Samsung before my contract even expired. The earlier iPhone 7 it replaced got major version update support to 2021, and still gets minor patches, including one a couple of weeks ago. Even comparing like-for-like on flagship products, the androids perform poorly when it comes to Long Term Support.

latchkey 3y ago

> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. For me, it is the improved cameras.

eyelidlessness 3y ago
I get why this currently appears downvoted, but I do think this is a real factor. The camera improvements in particular drive device sales and keep people on a software upgrade treadmill whether they’d update their older devices or not.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  To me the camera is probably the least important concern I have with a phone. I don't think I've used my camera yet this month. I would trade a camera for a smaller phone with better battery life.
- asadotzler 3y ago
  That has reached some limits in the last few cycles, in my view. The cameras are almost all good enough for almost all users and the only place anyone cares now are the people with a grand to blow for very minor improvements, a fraction of the audience for the fraction of phone sales at the top end. Look down market even slightly and the cameras on today's upper and middle mid-range or the those on a two or three year old hero phone poll exceptionally well with users today. Sensors, lens packs, and OIS are good enough and cheap enough for even very low light situations and everything else is software (or perhaps some new hardware as we get more ruin like "A.I." enhancements like portrait mode -- God damn if I have to see another photo with that exaggerated depth of field I'm gonna kick something, but even those effects don't need this years model as the hardware and software for that have filtered out over the last 7 years. I think we're really at the end for the "I need (or even want) the new phone for a better camera." (note Samsung and others marketing moves to streaming and astrophotography as "normal" photos that most people care about are simply good enough.) Perhaps something more computationally challenging like live deep fake video and things like that will drive sales going forward and that's "camera" sure (but also that AI chip) but photography, pictures, IMO, has reached a plateau and nothing exciting has happened enough yet in video to replace "outrageously better pictures" as as a that now fading upgrade cycle driver. I think battery (and weight considerations) could be drivers in the near future. Fast charging, IMO, has been a bigger driver of revenue for phone makers than cameras for the last few years and I suspect we'll see marketing and user demand shifting to "does your phone run for a week without bending your spine" or "does your phone charge in under a minute" something like that becoming a focus in 3-5 years and cameras falling down to compete with things like cover glass which has also plateaued and mostly fallen off the users radar. Apple's rumored battery and size bump and the EU's move to consumer replaceable batteries is a perfect storm for super fast charging, even at destructive levels, then OEM or 7-11 sales of replacement batteries. I imagine we'll also see optimizations in the rest of the hardware and software stack become a focus for that magical week of battery that's probably not a decade away. Photography, like cover glass, is bound by some pretty daunting constraints of physics and I think we've hit "good as it's gonna get" or "good enough" or some combination of those for a while and so phone makers need something new to drive their annual or biannual upgrade cycles. Apple hopes VR will be big and replace a lot of phone and pc use cases, perhaps the way the iPhone and iPad did so much of that 15 years ago, but I don't see that happening for another decade or three (I've used various head mounted VR kits since 1993; it's not happening any time soon.) Android is too fragmented to say what that ecosystem is betting on over the next 5 years or so, but I'm gonna wager it's battery and screen followed by performance, camera, and then storage, durability and IP rating and all those other "a few small but big spending segments care enough to keep improving" features.

JoshTriplett 3y ago

> Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Much simpler than that: Apple doesn't allow third parties to make iPhones, while Google allows third parties to make Android phones. Devices don't get updated because manufacturers stop providing updates for them.

alwillis 3y ago
> > Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Apple is doing a better job with operating system updates. On June 21, Apple released a bunch of iOS updates including iOS 15.7.7 [1] for devices going back to the iPhone 6s which was released September 2015--nearly 8 years ago. There's no reason why the large Android OEMs couldn't do the same if they wanted to. And that's with 81% of iPhone bought in the last 4 years running a version of iOS 16 [2] five months ago. When iOS 17 is available to be installed in two months, over 90% the installed base will be running iOS 16. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811 [2]: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/16/ios-16-adoption-stats-from-apple https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/16/ios-16-adoption-stats-f...
- folkrav 3y ago
  I think OP's point was that Google/Android don't have much to do with OEMs choosing to update their older devices or not.
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    They do, actually, via the Open Handset Alliance and Google Play. They are tied by what Qualcomm is willing to deliver in their BSPs, and that's basically 2 years of Linux LTS kernels. So the minimum support level is 3 years; two Android versions and one year of security patches. Samsung and Google can do 5 years of support because of Exynos/Tensor, and Samsung basically spends the money to support older Qualcomm devices themselves.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Almost all of the things that ios brings with update could be done with an android app update. I have been using ios since ios 9 and my usage is exactly the same since both in ipad and iphone: swipe or search for the app you want and use it. I would be more concerned about security updates though. What percentage of ios and android have all security updates released say t-7 days before applied?

eyelidlessness 3y ago
This is probably a big part of why people don’t generally opt out of iOS upgrades: they’re basically just annual app upgrades packaged together (notwithstanding some pretty conspicuous Safari updates in recent point releases), anything OS level is mostly iteration on a mostly stable core and has been for almost a decade. I do think they could and should be more aggressive with security updates. Both by releasing/messaging those separately from other kinds of point releases (improving but not great), and by notifying sooner/more frequently. It definitely irks me when I find out about a critical security patch over a week after it was available, and that the security content is a secondary link with no immediate conveyance of its urgency. And they should also make it a lot more obvious how to go find out if an update is even available in the first place. Even today(?)’s rapid response, I had to read about it on some site and then remember the incantation to go look to see if the update was available. Of course it was, so I tapped download and install. After waiting a while, I switched to another thing. When I came back, it was downloaded and ready and waiting for another affirmative to do the thing I already requested. I should not need to do any of this when I have automatic updates on.
- alwillis 3y ago
  > I do think they could and should be more aggressive with security updates. Both by releasing/messaging those separately from other kinds of point releases (improving but not great), and by notifying sooner/more frequently. Normies usually have their updates set to automatic, so they get the updates a soon as they're out. I count over 9 security updates for iOS 16 [1] as of July 10th, with the rest of the year to go. I feel like as soon as any type of update is released by Apple, I'm inundated with the news from many websites, RSS feeds and the PGP-signed email from Apple with the news [2] [3]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 [2]: security-announce@lists.apple.com [3]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201214 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201214

toast0 3y ago

Regardless of OS upgrades, which Google and device manufacturers collaboratively do a terrible job with, there's no reason the CA bundle should be tied to the OS version. Curl's ca bundle page says the mozilla bundle is about 200KB uncompressed, and my Android says the Chrome App is 25 MB, so a 1% increase in app size seems reasonable to keep things current. Certainly, other apps might also want updated CAs, too, but do they need all of them, or only the CAs they might actually use?

CaliforniaKarl 3y ago
> there's no reason the CA bundle should be tied to the OS version. This is covered in TFA: > …especially as Android releases version 14, which has the ability to update its trust store without a full OS update.
- toast0 3y ago
  Yes, that's going to be relevant in about 7 years. In the meantime, Google should just include a trust store in their browser. Of course, project Treble was supposed to save us by now. IMHO, Google really should work on reducing the OS to the minimum needed, and make it possible for apps to share dependencies. If App A and App B use the same X, it doesn't really need to be downloaded and stored twice. For X including CA bundles, libraries, etc. Then you push play store publishers to update libraries and what not to what is commonly installed.
  - jart 3y ago
    I like to build portable static executables, so I embed the CA roots in every executable I build that needs to talk HTTPS. It'd be great if there weren't so many mom and pop shops in the certificate authority business. It just boggles my mind how the Internet hasn't fallen apart, considering the only thing you have to do is compromise something like a printing shop in France that runs a CA as a side hustle.
    - asadotzler 3y ago

myko 3y ago

And yet Android devices that are 7 years old get the latest & greatest APIs, whereas I won't be able to use the new OSLog functionality built into the iOS 17 SDK for 3 years

jeroenhd 3y ago
The Android compatibility libraries are a godsend. Sure, your users won't run the latest version of Android for a year or two at least, but you can use almost every new Android feature the moment it's presented and it'll work out of the box for the vast majority of your users. Want to use a modern web engine but your customers are running a seven year old OS? No problem, the webview updates come AUTOMATICALLY. Want to integrate with Google's new nearby share mechanism? It's already present on the same devices. Google's cloud API changed as part of a recent Android update? No matter, every API feature has already been working on every outdated phone since before you even know there was going to be a problem. You do end up with annoying clutter supporting all of these devices because of API/permission changes, but it's all quite easy to deal with if you just stuff the compat code away behind an abstraction.

kelnos 3y ago

It's a lot easier to keep your customers' older devices up to date when you control the entire hardware and software stack on them. Google really has very little say if some random low-end manufacturer doesn't feel like updating their customers. Sure, they can try to require that they provide updates for a certain amount of time in order to get and keep their Android certification, but at some point they'll just give up and ditch Android entirely. And on top of that, Qualcomm just won't provide updated kernels and blobs for their older chipsets after a while. Google has managed to negotiate them up from their pathetic 18 months that it used to be, but Qualcomm still doen't have to play ball any further if they don't want to. And Google's making their own chipsets now, so they care a little bit less about that problem. Not saying it's great, but that's just how it is. Android's model basically means it's just going to be that way. Apple's means they get more control over such things.

INTPenis 3y ago

>Seems like Apple is doing a better job of convincing / allowing folks to move to a more recent version of their operating system. Yes it's called planned obsolescence and nature ain't thanking them.

mrweasel 3y ago

It really weird that given everything these days needs to be a subscription, why isn't someone building a relatively cheap phone, with a yearly subscription to keep software update coming. Other than a smallish group if tech enthusiasts and people who consider phones fashion, I argue that most are perfectly happy with their 2020 iPhone or 2018 Android phone. They are clearly not replacing them as fast as the industry expects, so may a small fee for updates, so you avoid having to replace the phone would be acceptable.

zulban 3y ago

> better job of convincing / allowing Not having old phones on your platform is a failure, not a success. Old Android phones still work okay. Apple isn't giving away free new phones - there is no right to repair.