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Android 5.0 (or “Lollipop” as its known) has been out for over 3 months now and unfortunately despite the massive improvements over earlier version of Android, it is hardly managing to make a dent in the overall Android picture. Even the long since supported Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” has over four times the market share, despite being vulnerable to some major security exploits.
In fact the situation is probably even worse than this as Google does not collect any statistics from phones running versions of Android lower than version 2.2, but at least phones running version 2.2 only barely make an appearance on the chart with 0.4% of all phones. All versions of Android lower than 4.4 (roughly a billion devices) have recently been shown to have a security vulnerability that Google is not going to be fixing directly and is leaving up to OEM's to fix.
To compare this to iOS, Android's nearest mobile OS competition, today over 62% of all iOS users are using iOS 8 on their Apple devices (shortly after launch this was up to 56%) and only 3% run anything earlier than iOS 7. However this is probably partially due to the huge physical turnover of Apple hardware, with Apple fans regularly queuing up at their local Apple store to get the newest iPhone, which of course comes with the latest OS version.
This makes a massive difference for app developers in several ways, in both allowing them to always be able to target the majority of users by coding for the newest version of the OS, as well as forcing them to keep an up compatible and updated with the latest version of they want it to be used.
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KitGuru Says: While it is great that almost 40% of Android users are using a secure phone and I'm sure that includes most of us, the other 60% are using these totally insecure phones every day, for banking, email, work, etc. This is totally unacceptable and needs to be addressed by Google soon.
Source: Android Developer
Part of the problem is the inability for some users to upgrade. My S5 came with 4.4.4 and the only way it upgrades is if it tells me there is an upgrade available. My carrier is Virgin Mobile and they won’t allow me to upgrade the OS on my own. With Apple products upgrading the OS is much more straightforward.
Phone manufacturers that use Android as an OS (let’s not forget it’s an open source code) are usually responsible for the update since they heavily customize the OS with their skins and bloatware – Sense, Touchwiz etc… Google is therefore not responsible for updates. Nexus phones (by Google) usually get the latest update on most if not all devices, unless, of course, limited by the hardware capabilities of the phone.
YeAh so I will have to wait for Smasung and Virgin Mobile to both add their tweaks to the new OS. Not going to hold my breath. I have gotten updates to KitKat but I doubt I will ever see an update to Lollipop. I know with my previous Android devices there were never any major updates
Touchwiz updates are developed by Samsung in your case, and pushed by your carrier OTA (over the air). But as you said the likelihood of that happening is close to non existent. Have you considered custom roms? Cyanogenmod or the likes of?
I haven’t looked into custom roms. The phone works so I don’t see a point to screwing with it.
I was originally trying to point out how it is much simpler for iOS devices to update than Android ones
I’m running lollipop on my shield tablet and it does seem nice and smooth and pretty, however lollipop does seem to have killed off some compatibility with apps from the play store.
As soon as HTC pull their fingers out of their collective arses and produce an update, i’ll grab lollipop but untill then it’s a waiting game.
You should hopefully get that update to Lollipop soon Andrew, I got my update last night on my S5 on Three so it is slowly making the rounds. Hopefully Virgin push that out for you soon.
That is because asshole carriers slow down updates, because they want to install some bloat to android, nothing else.
ALso, because Samsung and some other guys give a fuck about phones older than 6months.
This is always reported as a bad thing about Android and people will often use it against Android. But it’s the sacrifice of Android being so open. The reason that updates are delayed is due to manufactures adding their stuff and that is the great thing about Android because we get great things from that. iOS doesn’t face this problem pretty much everyone is on the latest iOS but everyone’s iOS is the same there is no one doing the extreme customisation and feature adding like Cyanogen and Samsung or HTC. It depends what you want. Most people don’t really care about customisation and will be happy with iOS but if you want to change anything in iOS you’re stuck.