8 months in, 11% of Android devices run 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich - Page 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shidell 

 

To an iOS developer:

 

Can you adjust your project's build settings to target from iOS 6 to 5? If so, does it build successfully immediately or does it fail? If it fails, how many errors and can you cite three (if there are?) If you do that again and choose iOS 4, what happens in that instance?

Yes, I can, but I don't want to. If I choose target iOS4, than I can't use Storyboard for UI design. But if use separate .xib files for UI in iOS5, you can target to iOS4 without problem. 

BTW, I've tried to download Android and Eclipse because I want to know how to program on Android. Really, it's horrible! How come a developer could create beautiful apps with a horrible tools? No wonder most of Android apps has horrible UI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bregalad 

The Android situation is more complex than Google wants to admit.

 

Today I could go online and order a device running Android Jelly Bean. I could also choose a device running Ice Cream Sandwich or Gingerbread or even Froyo. Yes there are still "brand new" phones in your local Best Buy and cell phone provider running Android 2.2.

 

Remember what kind of message Google is trying to send. Today they're emphasizing users who regularly visit Google Play because that's the group that media companies and app developers care about.

 

Tomorrow when Google claims a majority of smart phones are shipping with Android remember that number includes millions of people who don't visit Google Play often enough to be counted and people who don't even have a data plan, but have an Android phone because that's what they were convinced to get.

You know, when my dad had a Samsung Android phone from 2009, he didn't know what Android was, and he never installed any new apps in the 2 years that he had it. As far as I know, he didn't know how. And he didn't know what "root" meant. Near the end of his 2-year contract, he ditched it because the touch screen developed a fatal flaw and would not respond to input on one side. He got himself an iPhone 4S. Now, he not only knows what version of iOS he's using, he's downloaded dozens of apps. And I didn't have to teach him any of it. That's the real secret to combating OS fragmentation: make it so dirt simple, even your parents could do it. If you have to be a tech-savvy person to do it, or if you have to wait until your carrier officially releases it, your OS is doomed to fragmentation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 
And, yes, there are feature phones that run Android.

Are there feature phones that run Google Android, meaning the Google licensed version required for using the PlayStore (afaik)? I had just assumed that a smartphone would be required to offer Google services, a part of Google Android.

I don't know of any feature phones that run a licensed Android, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. To be fair I've seen mention that some were being considered in the past but I can't actually find them and don't even know that they were Google versions rather than knock-offs anyway. What link do you have to the ones you saw? Still current?

My wife and i, both had Motorola androids for 2 years. The phones worked pretty good for about 6 months. Then they both started glitching, hang ups, apps would open and close on its own, and constant "force close" messages. Finally, by the end of 2-year Verizon contract the phones would call people in my address book on it's own! I thought it was a bad batch of phones, maybe a beta version of phones or something. My brother-in-law bought the new Motorola android less than year ago - same thing is happening to him now. It seems that any kind of "sandwich" google releases tastes like crap.

I was hoping that Google's Android would be a real competition to iPhone thus forcing Apple to create even greater things, but was I wrong. When Steve Jobs presented the very first iPhone, he said that iPhone was 5 years more advanced than any other smart phone. He was wrong - iPhone is more like 25 years more advanced than Android. I have a friend who still uses the very first iPhone. It is very noticeably slower than iPhone 4, but still makes calls, sends messages, takes pictures, and plays music. I'm sure that 20 years from today Android will be the same crap that it is today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shidell 

 

This is part of the problem in understanding fragmentation. Updating iOS devices to support new APIs is great, but if Apple selectively turns other software features off, what are you left with? That "fragmentation" is no different than Android. You end up with iOS 6 devices that are fully-capable, and iOS 6 devices that can only perform a subset of what iOS 6 is capable of, like the 3GS. 

Perhaps you're not understanding fragmentation and where it actually makes a difference...

Adding or removing end user features does not fragment a platform. This is what is usually referred to as "product differentiation." Which means using particular features to make a model or device better than another to create a product line. Devices are a medium for platforms, they allow the user the ability to make use of the platform. Different products can have different features, but as long as the platform is the same across the line, there is no real fragmentation. The platform is basically the operating system; iOS. All Apple devices ship with the same version of the operating system-they may not have all the same user features, but the underlying resources, code, and support are the same, thus, the devices are running the exact same platform.

The fact that you are so hell bent in wondering if you're able to target multiple OS versions in iOS proves that you as an Android developer are worried about the problem as it exists on Android. It is a non-issue on iOS. Yes, it is possible to write an app that runs on multiple versions of the OS. Most do, in fact. I think a lot of apps in the AppStore require 4.0 or later.

From a user point of view, there is nothing inherently wrong with a fragmented platform. They buy a device it comes with an OS to do stuff. What all it can do is usually always limited to that particular device. Fragmentation is mostly a problem as far as support is concerned. Apple bragging about user base statistics is to the benefit of the developer, not the end user. However it does ultimately affect the end user as well by allowing them to run apps that make use of some brand new technology a developer might use to make the experience of using his/her app much better.

The key issue with Android is not the fragmented mess it is, but that there's no way for users to help defragment it. They're stuck and as such so are the developers that write apps for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekmorr 


This is an oversimplification. Android provides support for writing backwards-compatible apps. For starters, there's the Android Support Library, which packages newer APIs into a library that can be bundled with apps: http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.html. The community has expanded on this with additional libraries, such as ActionBarSherlock (http://actionbarsherlock.com/), NotificationCompat2 (https://github.com/JakeWharton/NotificationCompat2), and NineOldAndroids (https://github.com/JakeWharton/NineOldAndroids). Google provides documentation on writing code that works across versions (http://developer.android.com/training/basics/supporting-devices/platforms.html and http://developer.android.com/training/backward-compatible-ui/index.html).
Certainly there are limits to what you can do with compatibility libraries and reflection, but it's not accurate to say that developers can't use newer APIs on older devices.

Moving new APIs to support older versions of an operating system is a nice work-around, but you cannot move any kind of architectural change to an older OS. Apple has added things like ARC, GCD, c-blocks, etc., which make writing programs easier and running programs more efficient. These are changes made to the compiler, core foundation and kernel and cannot be passed back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shidell 

 

Can you cite some of the new APIs you've used? For example, do you recall an new API implemented in iOS 5 that you chose to use, that perhaps you then replaced with a new one in iOS 6? I'm reviewing the Apple site but can't find a good example.

 

The point of an SDK is provide a framework that will not change that developers can rely on. If a provider dramatically altered their SDK every release, it would break software that's dependent on it left and right. This is why SDKs and APIs remain mostly the same, with perhaps a 5% deprecation rate over time--they have to be set in stone, because even a minute change will have a ripple effect in the environment of software written to take advantage of it.

 

iOS is like Android in this regard, and like Windows, OS X, etc. This is how you can update from iOS 5 to iOS 6 and 99.9% of the applications will continue to work as they did previously.

You can't find them because iOS 6 SDK is not available to the public and it is still under NDA. But I can tell you this. The API changes (new and modified) are 100 pages long. There are hundreds of new API and hundreds of modified API. There are few apps right now that will crash under iOS 5 and most of the issues with them can only be fixed when the developer update their code and build using the new Xcode that will be release when iOS is released. I remember when Apple released iOS 4 my apps used to crash because Apple changes how memory management is handled in UITableView. Apple released iOS 4 GM and started accepting updates a week prior to the final iOS 4 release.

With every major release (iOS x.0) the rate of apps that will not work as they should is higher than you think. Usually more than 40% of my apps will not work or crash when I try to use certain feature. Apple does modify a lot of iOS APIs between major releases.

As I recall, and confirmed via Forbes ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/darcytravlos/2012/06/12/the-importance-of-apples-wwdc-keynote-address/ ), Apple announced that over 80% of the 365M iOS devices are running iOS 5.

From that article "Again, leading into the iOS6 discussion were these facts:  365M iOS devices have been sold and 80% of these have upgraded to iOS 5."

Quote:

Originally Posted by fuwafuwa 

Yes, I can, but I don't want to. If I choose target iOS4, than I can't use Storyboard for UI design. But if use separate .xib files for UI in iOS5, you can target to iOS4 without problem. 

 

BTW, I've tried to download Android and Eclipse because I want to know how to program on Android. Really, it's horrible! How come a developer could create beautiful apps with a horrible tools? No wonder most of Android apps has horrible UI.

I did the same thing a while back and again few months ago and the experience is still shitty. The whole thing is a nightmare! You spend hours following instructions on multiple websites.

Why should the manufacturer of the cellphone provide a free upgrade?

The main result of that is that the customer will hang on to the old phone instead of paying for a new one. I simply can't see the reason for doing that, unless you are evil and want to lock the customer into a walled garden, where the stupid customer believe  he his happy for no other reason than having a system that he believes serves him well.

No, but when Andoid supplier does not provide upgrades, it may be a simple as that they believe no upgrades will enhance their sales. No short term money in free upgrades, and when you don't have customers you expect any degree of loyalty from, you either provide a reason for loyalty, or you go for the fast money. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by fuwafuwa 

In android, the impovement over previous version is mere version number 😔. That's why many don't bother to upgrade, and most of the devices that have newest version installed are new devices😁. Or we can say, the common practise to upgrade android is buying new device😭.

If only that were the case, so many of the new android devices coming out are still using older version of android, lots of new phones come out with 2.3.3 & new i mean new tablets are coming out with 3.1.
& just as bad as that, if you just bought one of these devices you may never get an OS update :O EVER!!! Dun dun duuunnn!!! :p

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


Way to miss the point.
It's exactly because the feature phones don't access GooglePlay that the entire premise of this 'study' is flawed.
Let's say that there are 1 M Android feature phones in use and 1 M Android smart phones. And let's say that 500,000 of the smartphones accessed Google Play during the past 2 weeks. and 50,000 of the phones that accessed Google Play were running ICS.
Now:
1. Google reports that as '10% of Android phones are using ICS'. But that's not true. There are 2 M Android phones total so the actual percentage would only be 5% - at best. Google didn't say '10% of Smartphones', they said '10% of Android phones' (which includes smartphones AND feature phones).
2. They are assuming that the percentage of phones using ICS is the same for the 500,000 smart phones that accessed GooglePlay as it is for the ones that didn't. For the reasons given above, that's an erroneous assumption. So the actual percentage would be even lower than 5% (using the numbers above).

No I understood the point you were making, and it probably has some small impact if those "feature phones" aren't capable of using GooglePlay but still counted in activation numbers. I personally have no idea if they can or can't use GooglePlay, nor whether or how many might exist. I don't think it's much of an issue in any case, tho you certainly have a valid question about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 


I'm not the one who called them feature phones. I'm going by what the manufacturer and/or carrier calls them. If you're going to argue that you know more than all of the above sources, you'd better provide some evidence.
As for the rest, I stated my arguments clearly - and you haven't refuted a single one. Let me spell them out again and please point out the flaws in my arguments. No need for your tantrums or tangents, just point out the logical fallacies:
1. This article only looks at phones which can access GooglePlay and not feature phones. If there's even a single feature phone running Android, then this method is overstating the percentage using ICS. Since I've demonstrated that there are, in fact, feature phones running Android, Google's numbers are too high. More importantly, even if a phone is actually a smart phone, if it is used as a feature phone and never accesses GooglePlay, it would not be counted and again Google is overstating the percentage using ICS.
For example, my daughter just got an Android 2.2 phone that would probably qualify as a smart phone. It is capable of accessing Google Play, but she has never done so (and probably never will). Essentially, by looking only at Google Play, Google is understating the total number of Android phones out there, and therefore overstating the percent on ICS.
2. Most ICS phones are relatively new. Most people access GooglePlay much more with a new phone than an old one - so newer phones are overrepresented.
3. Just setting up a new phone causes most people to access GooglePlay to sign up the phone to their account. Even if they never use GooglePlay any other time, they get one access when the phone is new. Again, this overemphasizes the number of new phones.
4. I do not believe that GooglePlay is available in all countries. In particular, some third world countries (notably Iran) can not access it. Since those countries are likely to have fewer (if any) of the latest ICS devices, again, this source overestimates ICS penetration.
Have at it. Please tell me the logical fallacy in any of my arguments. No theatrics and no more personal attacks, just stick to the logic and tell me why I don't have any argument.

That's a well-constructed argument Jr. Well-done. Now please read the advice you gave in your last sentence and use it in your own future replies. We can all politely disagree and make the forums much more pleasant and welcoming. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by winstein2010 

Here is the problem:  unlike Apple, Google phone manufacturers hav no financial incentive to update older phones.  Until Google shares the revenue with the manufactures, Fragmentation it is.

I seriously do not mean to be a jerk here, but how do you share revenue on a free operating system?  Are you suggesting that Google begin releasing OS specific paid applications and offer revenue sharing on those apps?  Or are you suggesting make Google adwords somehow OS specific and share revenue via some sort of graduated system where the newest OS receives a disproportionate incentive?  

The moment they start charging for the Android OS in order to share revenue it breaks their model, and drives up the cost of devices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jragosta 



And, yes, there are feature phones that run Android.

Can you cite an example or two?