What would you expect? Providing timely updates for their range of phones would require new teams and new departments funded by something.
People sell single applications for £30 a year, £100 a year for an OS would be cheap.
Edit : on google. The only make security updates mandatory nothing else. Manufacturers often don’t provide OS updates that frequently, and definitely not in line with android releases. Though some are better than others.
I dont want OS updates, just security
Keep in mind the next issue with that idea is you now have to keep branches of security updates for every release for long periods of time.
you would only offer it on top tier phones probably and wouldnt offer more then 1-2years past the google mandate (as most people in the US finance their phone not that much more a month to be honest)
This surprised me, I bought a second hand Note 3 and it got the October security update.
It got absolutely nothing before that I had been using the phone for a few months at that point and no old updates came, stuck on android 5, but out of the blue a security update. I got another a few weeks after as well and since then nothing again.
But I will eventually go full custom on this as I always do, but for once the stick install is not total garbage, so I am living with it.
Edit: as for what to do about the outdatedness.
Once the device hits end of software life they should be made to network and bootloader unlock them via update, both of which are very easy for them to do and of little consequence to them either. On top of this there should co e the option to retain the current system at your own use (99% of people would do this) or at this point factory reset and push a bone stock of the latest android. No maintaining needed there after from the company and the device can have a long and useful life while maintaining the norm for everyone else.
wow, theres alot of incite in this thread. ive been contemplating switching to android from IOS when i renew this year. i know that i dont know much about the ins and outs of android, so i found this really useful.
If you are ok with adapters for headphones iPhone is the way to go probably.
honest, i dont like the idea of using an adapter dongle for headphones, id rather have a straight headphone jack. plus ive been messing with a used xperia L2 to get a feel for android. its running nougat with the nov. 2018 sec. patch. i also feel its just time to try another phone OS.
Yeah headphone jack is my major turn off
F-Droid does a pretty good job of this right now. It’s not loaded with useful apps, but it’s actually a pretty decent selection right now, and starting to pick up steam. When I first started using F-Droid a few years ago, there was little to no useful applications on it.
Now, (thanks in large part to Tibor Kaputa), there’s a ton of apps that both replicate functionality found on Android, and extend it.
The problem to me is that there are so many useful apps (banking and media consumption are the two big ones for me) that there is just no way will ever go open source.
It’s super concerning because Google is obviously trying to kill of Android and prevent the open system that we somehow accidentally lucked into…
EDIT: Right now, from F-Droid, I have:
and honesty there’s quite a bit more. I use all of these all the time.
Well colour me surprised. There is another Security policy update this morning…
They are listening.
People say this but i got an iPhone and have never used an adaptor. Granted i have wireless headphones, there pretty common these days.
the adaptor drama is basically a none issue though, it just extends your cable.
If an adaptor is your biggest issue, you really don’t have any issues.
I’ve been an owner of an iPhone 6s Plus for over 3 years, and while it is starting to become a dated product, Apple never skipped the beat in updates. So as long as it serves me with almost anything I can do with it, there is little reason I should upgrade, unless I’m a maniac, who’s trying to load all of his uncompressed tracks on his phone with just 128GB of storage, or some maniac who shoots video in 4K all the time.
While some newer Android phones, including some of Oppo’s high-end ones, do have some sense in styling, can the manufacturer keep the product as up to date as Google and continue to support it for at least 4 years?
As for the dongle dilemma, I have to admit I’m kind of being driven away from wired earphones as of today due to the incredible battery support that the one of the two I am using more often (not going to say what kind it is due to the potential to send the forum to a partial shutdown), its excellent sound quality and comfort. I am thinking of getting another one just because staying cable-free somewhat makes sense.
Another reason why I don’t see the use of dongles being the potential needs if I have to get another phone that comes minus the 3.5mm jack is because anyone apparently can wire up or jerryrig their car to have Bluetooth connection. I did this to mine years ago and I am still using it. Being able to deal with just one cable for charging the phone just keeps the clutter to a minimum. The downside of jerryrigging my car with a Bluetooth adapter is that sometimes the connection will refuse to even make the connection and that whenever I get phonecalls I had to use the loudspeaker, due to a lack of a microphone accessory within the custom Bluetooth audio setup.
But in all of saying that, I still use the 3.5mm audio jack periodically.
This is actually the reason why I might move from my iPhone SE to Android. I bought Sennheiser HD 4.40 BT headphones but I can’t get volume low enough that it would be comfortable for me. I tried playing around with EQ and all sorts of other tricks but none worked. On my Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 (company phone) I had the same issue, but with separate app I was able to lower the volume for individual apps like Soundcloud and Spotify, which solved the problem. For now I use my Android phone for when ever I want to listen to music while on the road.
But on the other hand, I want to use my phone as long as possible, so 2-3 years of security updates is too short for me.
I say something like this everytime this it brought up. I don’t think Android is so bad in terms of security. Many things are in the playstore packaged as userspace programs. Such as network services. You don’t need a security patch of your operating system for them to be updated. Bitcoin people will tell you specifically to use a wallet on your phone. Because your phone (probably) is the most secure device you own (unless you’re not running Windows on your PCs). Normal people don’t care about security even. So there is that. They care about convinience more than that. And that’s not negotiable. All the apps also usually come from the playstore. Witch makes it even more hard for malicious things to happen. Sure, you (can) install them in other ways. But that should not count as with apple you don’t even get the option, really.
I also think it’s not very fair to judge Android as a whole for some devices that don’t ever get an updated. Or are bloated with adware/spyware by the manufacturer.
So I know it’s not necessarily getting updates for as long as Apple does, BUT you do get them for some time. Depending on what brand you choose sometimes longer or not very long at all. That’s on you. You choose “insert some manufacturer” over apple. Not necessarily Android over IOS, it’s not black and white like that. Your device choice is on you and you should not evaluate the entire Android ecosystem, just because you choose to buy the cheapest thing around. Android isn’t inherently responsible for a manufacturer not delivering updates.
And with Android you also do get the ability to more easiely install custom roms. So if you’re scared by not having the most recent security update. You (can) very easily fix that. And if you don’t want google services, because you feel they invade your privacy. Then go ahead and not install them.
For me personally the pros far outweight the cons
For me personally, I actually don’t have cons.
My choice of manufacturer was/is OnePlus. The OnePlus one was great. Yeah sure it didn’t get that many updates. But they also didn’t have an own ROM at that point in time. Now they do and they are one of the first to push out updates. Not sure how that will relate to long term updates. And even before, they do (unlike some other manufacturers) don’t do crazy redicolous partition stuff and ways to unlock your bootloader that make it tedious to install custom roms. It was a breeze on the OnePlus One. My first time ever doing that. Had zero issues with it having used it from launch until like a few months ago (might be half a year by now would have to check, let’s say it is half a year). I used the OnePlus One until it physically broke and always had the “newest thing in town” installed. I think if you’re not doing crazy modding (I sure didn’t) installing a custom rom isn’t hard at all. You install TWRP and then all it takes is drop a zip into your phone and press install and you can do full system backups as you would be able to on a vmware (optionally excluding your sdcard / bulk of data). Given the right phone choice it’s not hard and it’s not rocket science and it does not take up a lot of time or knownledge either. It’s very easy and can get your updates for many more years.
Unfortunately this has been proven wrong several times over.
Either Google don’t actively check and police the app store and what goes on it or are so far behind on the latest exploits and how to spot them that it is scary. There is lots of malware on the official Play store.
Disagree I use headphones on charger and forgot headphones from time to time and have spares really don’t want adapter to be required when dealing with audio as there is no real reason to not have it. Not interested in wireless so pass on that (mostly work reasons) there is no reason for the removal and I’ll vote with my wallet
Most of the maleware I know of it like es file explorer sending home to china what you do in es file explorer. Depending on how you see it that’s either maleware or “quality control”. I still don’t use it because of it though. But that’s a thing. But I have never yet encountered an outright virus that exploits android and sends away say your bank account info from your bank app. App data is pretty contained on Android until you give your apps root priviledges by rooting your device first.
Whenever there’s a fad game, there’s always the umpteen clones listed with it on the Play Store. There doesn’t appear to be the same QC going on in the Play Store than there is on the iOS App Store.
(Article doesn’t go into numbers from each platform, but I’m assuming iOS would be lower, or people would be downloading the clones less)
But that was 5 years ago Android changed a lot since then. You got anything more recent?
I mean granted though while I do recommend Android to you guys and to many of my friends. At the same time I do recommend IOS to my not-so-techy relatives, because I just think it’s more save if you have zero amount of what I would call technical common sence. It’s more locked down than Android is, witch is at the same time good and bad. Depending on who you are and what you want to do with your device. But then those same relatives buy a cheap Android device, because they don’t want to pay for either IOS or the Android phones I would buy.