News - Android 4.x device numbers finally edge past Gingerbread

[HEXUS]

Android Ice Cream Sandwich was released by Google more than 17 months ago.

Read more.

[andykillen]

despite google making new versions, its rare if ever that a phone supplier will incorporate a new rev into their upgrade program, and less likely still that most people will upgrade. Thus we will be stuck with v2.X versions of android for a number of years now. All this means even with the advent of Android 5 is that the average mobile app dev will need yet more phones to test with.

Being quite honest I am getting a bit hacked off with the mobile phone market and the number of revisions we have to deal with, no matter what the OS. But then we are just pawns in the game of market share.

[crossy]

despite google making new versions, its rare if ever that a phone supplier will incorporate a new rev into their upgrade program, and less likely still that most people will upgrade. Thus we will be stuck with v2.X versions of android for a number of years now. All this means even with the advent of Android 5 is that the average mobile app dev will need yet more phones to test with.

Being quite honest I am getting a bit hacked off with the mobile phone market and the number of revisions we have to deal with, no matter what the OS. But then we are just pawns in the game of market share.

Not sure I agree with the first statement - I would suspect that a lot of the Gingerbread traffic are folks who are now reaching the end of their contract, so are available for an upgrade. Anyone launching a G'bread phone these days is really going to be at a disadvantage.

Going to agree on the proliferation of issues - this wouldn't be an issue in itself if manufacturers "got with the program" and allowed handsets to be upgraded to a "modern" version. And it's not just Android - there were questions this week whether WinPhone8 folks will be able to get an upgrade to Windows "Blue" when it comes out.

Back to the article, I'm very glad that we're finally starting to see Froyo and G'bread in the minority, since ICS is the first version of Android that, I will argue, is at least a match for iOS.

[gonchuki]

I would suspect that a lot of the Gingerbread traffic are folks who are now reaching the end of their contract, so are available for an upgrade.

This is what everyone has been telling for a long time, yet there were 2.3 devices launching till July 2012 which means they were (or still are) on the market as commodity phones that come for free with a contract. This basically means we have at least 1-1.5 more years of slowly fading Gingerbread instead of the ideal world everyone wants.

[scaryjim]

Have to wonder how much of that gingerbread share is LG owners who are still being stuck over for a 4.0 update. Got a software update a week or so ago and got all excited thinking it might be the fabled 4.0 update, but I can't actually tell any difference between the new build and the previous one... *sigh*

[Fraz]

Yup - my g/f got a Galaxy Ace 2 a few months back, and I was pretty surprised it came with Gingerbread. However, Samsung do claim they will be providing an upgrade to 4.x in April... but as to whether that'll really happen, I don't know.

[miniyazz]

Google deduces the percentage of devices running different Android versions by analyzing which devices access the Google Play Store over a 14-day period. It reports these findings once per month.

So those users who are stuck on whatever rubbishy old version of Android and therefore no longer bother to access the Play Store because nothing runs, are discounted?

[Agent]

So those users who are stuck on whatever rubbishy old version of Android and therefore no longer bother to access the Play Store because nothing runs, are discounted?

I've never really got my head around this, what's so "rubbishy" about older versions? Sure, they don't have the latest and greatest version on Android, but that doesn't mean it's going to make it a bad phone.

The more expensive phones get updated for a while these days. Any older phones with Gingerbread (like SGA2 above) are budget phones, not aimed at people like us. You can pick the SGA2 up for £140. If you go back a few years and look at what you got for £140, it's an unbelievable jump. I remember paying around that price for my SE C510, which could *just* about run some crappy Java apps.

What do you mean by "nothing runs" on the Play store too? I know you're not being entirely serious with that statement, but very few apps require anything above Gingerbread. The ones that do, normally have a version for GB users with features cut out. The Google tools are really very good at helping against this. They target Android 1.6 and then you can go up in the versions as you add features. In many cases, there is documentation of some form on alternatives for older versions on Android.

In fact, I can't think of a single app I've come across that won't work on GB. I know there will be some out there, but it's really not a widespread problem.

[crossy]

So those users who are stuck on whatever rubbishy old version of Android and therefore no longer bother to access the Play Store because nothing runs, are discounted?

Remember that "access the Play store" also includes devices that are polling the store looking for new versions of the apps they have, not just people shopping for new apps. So even your old Donut phone could still be accessing the store - unless you've set it not to of course, (or you've got it switched off).

As Agent says, just because you're on Gingerbread doesn't mean that you're excluded - heck, I just took a quick look at the Play app store and 2.3.3 gets you everything of the dozen or so I looked at. And if you're earlier then you can still dive in - e.g. GTAIII claims to only need Froyo.

[miniyazz]

I've never really got my head around this, what's so "rubbishy" about older versions? Sure, they don't have the latest and greatest version on Android, but that doesn't mean it's going to make it a bad phone.

The more expensive phones get updated for a while these days. Any older phones with Gingerbread (like SGA2 above) are budget phones, not aimed at people like us. You can pick the SGA2 up for £140. If you go back a few years and look at what you got for £140, it's an unbelievable jump. I remember paying around that price for my SE C510, which could *just* about run some crappy Java apps.

What do you mean by "nothing runs" on the Play store too? I know you're not being entirely serious with that statement, but very few apps require anything above Gingerbread. The ones that do, normally have a version for GB users with features cut out. The Google tools are really very good at helping against this. They target Android 1.6 and then you can go up in the versions as you add features. In many cases, there is documentation of some form on alternatives for older versions on Android.

In fact, I can't think of a single app I've come across that won't work on GB. I know there will be some out there, but it's really not a widespread problem.

I was more talking about ooooold versions of Android - <1.8. However not having owned one I'm assuming a) it's rubbishy and b) no apps work, which as you and crossy pointed out is probably wrong!