On Jan 19, 9:37 am, Moandji Ezana <[email protected]> wrote: > I think this is a massive issue that even the biggest Android fan can't > sweep under the carpet. I hope Google is at least willing to try to solve it > (but I kind of doubt it).
Google can't fix this - that vendors and carries can change Android is the very thing that attracts them to Android. Firmware upgrades are an expense to both vendors and carriers that benefits mostly the Android ecosystem, not the vendor / carrier, so both would rather sell you a new phone / contract. Andy Rubin in the past suggested that phones that don't get upgraded won't sell well. But first of all carriers decide what phones you buy through subsidies and promotions in most part of the worlds (except for strong brands like iPhone, Nokia or Blackberry), so they push the phones with their crapware on it, firmware upgrade or not. And mainstream customers (which now start to embrace smartphones heavily) don't even know what firmware is, let alone why they should update it, so there's not a huge pressure mounting there, either. Android 2.2 was released in June and is on about 51% of the Android phones accessing the Google market (2.3 is on 0.4%: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html). iOS 4 was also released in June, 4.1 in September and 4.2 in November; 4.x is estimated to be on 90% of all iOS devices according to the Bump guys who claim to have a sufficiently large base for such representative stats (http://www.quora.com/What-proportion-of-all- iPhone-owners-use-iOS4-%2A-today). This is surprisingly high, especially given that the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, along with the first two iPod touch version can't use iOS 4. But then again, they probably make up those 10%. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
