Android Updates? It's Complicated.

Source: The Understatement

Several weeks ago, this image was making the rounds. It paints a pretty grim image of Android support. Sucks, doesn't it? It's obvious that if you want a smartphone, you should buy an iPhone.

That would be great. If this picture wasn't a lie.


I don't deny Michael DeGusta's research. However, the way which he has presented the data creates misconceptions, especially with the older versions of Android. Additionally, comparing them side-by-side with iOS isn't a particularly fair comparison.

"But," I hear you say, "The point is to show the difference between update rates of the operating systems. That's what this graph does!"

Yes.  Strictly speaking. However, what it doesn't show is how those colors are derived. These are major versions. For iOS, that's 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. For Android, that's 1.0, 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.2, 2.3, (3.0), and now 4.0.

Android was released several months after the release of iOS 2.0. Therefore, in the time we've had 4 iOS versions, we've also had 8 or 9 Android versions, depending on if you count Honeycomb, which was only released for tablets.

Let's compare, say, the iPhone 1 with the HTC G1. By the graph, it's clear that the iPhone was supported longer. It received iOS 1, 2, and 3. The G1, despite being made by a company that did not write the software, received 4 major versions: 1.0, 1.1, 1.5, and 1.6. This makes one thing abundantly clear: It's particularly unfair to compare the iPhone to the first year of Android devices. In a single year, there were four major versions. iOS had one.

Since that time, Google has slowed the pace down to a more Apple-equse one or two updates per year. 2.0 came about in October 2009, (only a month after 1.6) followed by 2.2 in May 2010, followed by 2.3 in December 2010, and now, a year later, we have 4.0 in November 2011. This more sedate pace should make it easier for manufacturers to keep up with their updates.

How could we make this graph more fair? The truth is that Apple saves up all its new features for once per year. Google's features burn a hole in their pocket and they just can't wait to spend them, so they release versions more frequently. To even the graph, we should look at the colors as green being "OS was released within the year," yellow being "OS was released 1-2 years ago", orange being "OS was released 2-3 years ago," and red being "OS was released 3 or more years ago."

My apologies to Michael DeGusta.

See the difference? It is true that the majority of the phones here still don't make it to two years, which, let's be fair, they all really should. Shame on you, phones. However, it paints a significantly different picture than the original image. What we're seeing here is a bigger difference in how Apple and Google number their releases than the frequency of updates.

This chart also doesn't take into account the other difference between Android and iOS releases: When an Android version comes out, you get all the features from that version. iPhone 1 users: How are your picture messages going? iPhone 3G users: How's your multitasking and orientation lock? iPhone 4 users: How do you like Siri? The point is that Android updates give all the enhancements to every phone that they're installed to. iPhone updates artificially limit the features on phones to ensure selling points for the next version.

</rant>