We recently had an article about how Android is now beating iPhone in terms of app downloads as well as market share. Once thing the iPhone completely destroys Android in is support. Recently Michael Degusta did a little research one how many Android devices were on the current version of the OS. It did not come as a surprise to see iPhones were all on the current version, what was kind of baffling is the poor support Android appears to get. Here are some of the details:
- 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
- 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
- At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.
So why doesn’t Android get updated in the same fashion as iOS?
That’s a very good question. Obviously a big part of the problem is that Android has to go from Google to the phone manufacturers to the carriers to the devices, whereas iOS just goes from Apple directly to devices. The hacker community (e.g. CyanogenMod, et cetera) has frequently managed to get these phones to run the newer operating systems, so it isn’t a hardware issue.
The article is quite interesting and worth the read.
Source: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support