Android Support vs iOS Support

Somewhat deceptive, because a lot of stuff in Android is now unbundled and separately updated, whereas with iOS you have to upgrade to a new OS version to get a new version of the app.<p>iOS needs a whole OS update to update things like Mail, Maps, Safari, Siri, Notes, Reminders, Camera, Photos, etc<p>On Android, many of the core equivalents are available as Play store updates with the exception of stuff like Chrome and WebView which had deeper OS dependencies.<p>Is someone stuck on say, Android 4.2 (two releases ago) in a worse situation than someone stuck on iOS 5? The Android user in many cases could still get the latest Google Now cards, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, etc<p>Yes, it was bad in the Gingerbread era. But if you&#x27;ve got Jellybean or equivalent, in many cases, you don&#x27;t need to be on KitKat to get the majority of the latest features.

I&#x27;ve swapped from Android to an iPhone. And I think articles like this are dumb, and missing the damned point. I don&#x27;t need to justify my choice, as it&#x27;s that: a choice. You&#x27;re not joining a religion. So why preach?<p>Anyway, the difference lies here; those EOL&#x27;d phones? Yeah, well you have a much better chance of getting a community written ROM bringing you up to date, then you do have the same thing happen to your iPhone 3GS. I want to run TOR on my iPhone, but I don&#x27;t trust what&#x27;s in the App Store, and I&#x27;ve no way of putting FOSS on my phone. I give up that <i>choice</i> for a nice well supported handset.<p>But that doesn&#x27;t mean anyone who makes a different choice is wrong. Sigh.

If you split end users into tech people and lay people, then I don&#x27;t think it matters as much.<p>Most of my lay friends tend not to even realise they are not on the latest version. Their maps app gives them directions and the camera takes photos.<p>As for more techie people... that&#x27;s why I much prefer Android. The ROM scene is amazing, and allows my original Samsung Galaxy S 1 to run the latest version of Android. I also get to experiment with different ROMs that take different approaches to mobile OSes.

Apparently over 80% of the world doesn&#x27;t agree with the OP. Why could it be? Apparently they only care about what they can do with the phone they have in their hand, not a bunch of models listed in a table showing some argument, such as being stuck at an earlier major version. And some random bits:<p><pre><code> * on iPhones they can&#x27;t install CyanogenMod, Ubuntu Mobile, a custom ROM, newer experimental OSs. versions, Firefox. * on iOS they can&#x27;t find enough free apps, they end up paying 5 times more. It&#x27;s a money trap. * On iPhones they can&#x27;t install Android KitKat neither since iPhones are stuck on iOS. * Newer iPhones are stuck at similar specs to the previous versions mainly they couldn&#x27;t easily keep the API consistent if they had launched a 6.0inch iPhone and a 2inch one. * They can&#x27;t install iOS on a phone with very large screen, with dual sim card, a very small screen, a phablet, a water proof phone, a watch, a virtual machine, a game pad * iPhones are mostly oversold in US, due to carrier subsidy model. Most people end up paying higher sums during the whole contract, beyond the initial money they paid. It&#x27;s a money trap to suck more from customers.</code></pre>

What I find the most surprising is how Apple continued to sell the 3GS. You could have bought a 3GS at a time where I wouldn&#x27;t have updates for even a year. The upgrades also shouldn&#x27;t be a reason for buying a phone, you buy a phone for what it can do now. You don&#x27;t know whether an update will be useful or not. What did iOS 6 add? Apple&#x27;s own Maps, Facebook integration (why is that an OS feature?). Those are all things that in Android are just app updates, any app can integrate with other apps and feature SSO &amp; default apps (like Maps, SMS, browser) can be chosen by the user.<p>There are some things that iOS 7 does better then Android, and some things that Android does better. Both have a target audience and both are really advanced, but neither is a truly better OS.<p>I currently own an iPhone 5S. And while I do love the fingerprint sensor and the back-gesture-swipe, there really are some oddities in iOS. Why can&#x27;t I use a mp3 as a ringtone without using iTunes? Why do I have to use iTunes to add music to my phone? Why can&#x27;t I choose Chrome as my default browser?

Yes, Android support is a bit bad, slowly improving but still unsatisfactory. However, I agree with other commenters that it&#x27;s not a good apple to apple comparison. Most of the apps that come with Android with Google apps (which all of the OEMs listed use) have the majority of apps that can be updated from the Play Store. Besides for &#x27;low-level&#x27; APIs that change with each Android version, a lot of users still get the benefits of app updates, which ordinarily continue to work fine on older hardware.<p>Of course this becomes a problem for developers regarding which versions to target as a minimum, but to offset that to an extent, there are compatibility libraries (both from Google and the community).<p>Lastly, the aftermarket ROM community is doing wonderful work with supporting flagships and other device ports. It can only get better, definitely not a reason for me to switch to iOS, if I know the differences between the OS features, and what each version of each OS roughly has, I should also know that I can get a custom ROM that will have all and likely more features than stock Android.

However, that doesn&#x27;t take into account all the new features disabled on past iOS devices. Of course there are a variety of reasons why some features are not present: (lack of) hardware, marketing, difficult to backport.

What is the problem of running an older Android OS version on your phone if it runs fine? Some people are not tech savvy, and dont want every update. And most people buy a new phone every two years. So, while the graph is probably right, it is not pointing out a big problem.<p>For developers it is easy to build an android app that supports android version 2.2 upwards with the compatibility packages. Testing is just a tidbid harder.

I did survey of Android side of things during winter break right after Ice Cream Sandwich came out[0]. As I recall most of the severe fragmentation cases were low-end handsets which were typically behind a version or more already when released.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~okamoto/map.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-users.cs.umn.edu&#x2F;~okamoto&#x2F;map.png</a>

Clearly this also depends on what you consider a &quot;major version&quot;. If you consider major Android versions to be 1.x, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, Android would look a lot better.<p>In actual development experience, pre-ICS (2.x&#x2F;3.x) and post-ICS (4.x) are a big divider.

Does this count 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 as separate versions? I had all 3 on my phone and barely anything changed between them. This looks like typical Apple fanboyism to me.

I wonder how much this reflects a split in the market between people who treat their smartphone like a computer vs those who treat it like an appliance. When I buy a microwave, a TV, a stereo, a car, or pretty much any other consumer product, I have no expectation that the UI will ever change. I won&#x27;t have people moving the knobs on my cars dashboard, or &quot;flattening&quot; the UI on my microwave. Android is on OS used primarily by phone manufacturers who still want to control the user experience (e.g. TouchWiz), and who are selling that phone as an appliance.<p>Complaining that one can&#x27;t put Kit Kat on a Nexus S seems a bit like complaining that you can&#x27;t add HDMI input on your old Sony Trinitron or put ABS on my 1990 Miata.

right, but apple will turn your phone into a brick with an update because they stop caring about older models long before they officially drop support.

That fragmentation forces developers to be remained painful and, sucky old API and toolset. What really sucks is Google only advances to newer version, and don&#x27;t give a shit on old versions - that&#x27;s what they have been do on their services.<p>Google can provide something better even on old version of OS, but they didn&#x27;t because it&#x27;s annoying, so now all the 3rd-party developers must do clean the shit from Google.<p>Anyway, if Google is not idiot, they should know he problem is the fragmentation, and will offer some better abstraction layer which can cover any old systems too. And I believe the answer from Google is Chrome. Now I believe the Android - which is out of control - is out of focus in Google.

This is why I thought putting the CyanogenMod installer app in the Play store was a watershed event, with Google acknowledging the role of aftermarket Android distros in keeping older OEM devices current. Too bad that didn&#x27;t last more than a week or two.<p>The chart isn&#x27;t entirely fair, since Google Play Services is a kind of overlay for some APIs that can be kept current without an OS upgrade. But that also has the effect of making closed some parts of the Android system.<p>Overall, Google could help enable, and could more strongly encourage OEM partners to provide upgrades. I&#x27;m not sure why that isn&#x27;t a condition for Google logo and app suite licensing.

This is one of the reasons why I have an iPhone.

This is not the same reason that my latest phone upgrade was to iPhone. I always root my Android devices so that I can get the latest OS when I need it. For example, my Galaxy S2 is not 4 major updates behind as this chart says, it&#x27;s actually fully up to date. The Android ROM community is massively popular [1] so this comparison here is invalid.<p>[1] 5.4 million registered users on XDA-dev.com with the majority of the subforums being for Android phones.

Windows Phone is no better here either. They screwed WP7 users completely and rumor has it that 8.1 won&#x27;t work on WP8 handsets either.<p>I&#x27;ve moved to iOS for mobile devices as well. Better investment long term, especially considering that I am actually paying for some apps and want them to work for more than a couple of years before I have to argue with the upgrade treadmill.

This is a great illustration of why Android is likely to face problems in corporate deployments. Lack of security updates less than 2 years after release is likely to prove a serious problem for companies who operate a 3-5 year device refresh lifecycle...

This chart spells horrible things for all web developers.<p>Legacy Android brwosers will become the next IE6 in terms of joy drained from our lives.

Does it really matter when you get a new free android smartphone every two years? I doubt that people will get far enough behind to really care. Also, Google framework updates now so you always have the latest core experience without your UI functionality shifting around via OS update.