this is how Android has been forever. Jellybean was the most popular until around Nougat.
People keeping their phones for a longer time shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Cheap brands using old versions isn’t good though and that does represent some of the numbers.
I feel like at this point Google should ditch the annual OS level-up. Phones and their OSs have matured and pushing out a new version every year is just increasing the support Google has to provide without much benefit. I was running Android 9 until recently, and while I’m now on the 14 beta, I could easily see my current phone lasting long enough to outlive the current 5 years of security updates promised.
I haven’t been keeping up with the updates since they stopped naming them after food. I guess that worked. The numbers have gotten less important and less big changes. I think that’s probably best. just do updates that are needed, etc
But they’re doing security related updates. For example, in Android 11+ there’s app storage isolation, no app can access the shared storage without permission from the user. Just for those kind of update I think updates are important.
Definitely. Apple has ownership of software and hardware. Android phones manufacturers tend to offer random support except Samsung.
Haven’t we reached the point where it doesn’t actually matter as much as it used to? A lot has been separated out into services that get updated through the play store. So being left behind isn’t as big of a problem anymore as long as you’re still getting security updates.
Yeah. Maybe improvements to cameras is still a thing, but even those are so much better now than they used to be. But even that is really dependent on what phone you get. A flagship will always have a better camera than a budget phone.
Other than that I see no reason to spend top dollar on a mobile device whose capabilities peaked 5 or more years ago. I just buy used unlocked mid range phones every three years or so. Can’t say I’m missing anything.
I really should get a new phone… didn’t realize they drop old OSes so fast from security patches lol.
When buying a new phone, you could pick one that garantees 4-5 years of security updates.
Android update policy by top manufacturers for their flagships
Fairphone 4 has an incredible 5-year warranty, aims for 6 years of updates
Be aware of difference between security updates and features updates. For instance Fairphone 3 has Android 11 with regular security updates, I personally think that’s good since it provides stability and security, and the phone works perfectly fine. Some prefer getting new features faster, but feature updates may be bumpier.
My solution: Buy a Pixel, use GrapheneOS, good for five years.
Google isn’t building an software/hardware ecosystem, it’s building an ad empire. It justs needs its footprint calling back home on as most devices as possible. I don’t think it ever cared about which android version is highest (except for PR)
It’s quite sad that Google never figured out a way around this issue. The real problem is that they push the responsibility of updating to OEMs, which have no interest in updating their “old phones” (1 year old in most cases) because a new shiny one has been released.
I think the only way to really solve this is to make Android like Windows used to be back in the XP days. OEMs get a base system and they can customize it to their hearts content, but the updates to the base always come straight from the OS developer, no matter if the “OEM customizations” are ready for it or not.
This is really how Google should have built things in the beginning. Provide a stable driver API for hardware then upgrade the OS as needed without OEM cooperation. They are just now getting around to it with things like Treble, IIRC.
Even with things like Treble the updates still have to come from the OEM, so unfortunately I don’t see the situation changing any time soon.
