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Actually it's not. Android is a fundamentally different product to iOS. The whole point is that manufacturers from all over the world use it and modify it to their liking rather than develop a platform from scratch. Google wants all those end users to use its Play Store and other Google services. The point has never been for Google to domineer over manufacturers and demand that they ship vanilla Android.

Anyone who cares about timely updates knows which devices to buy - OnePlus, Pixel, Nokia etc. If you're buying a Samsung you're accepting extremely slow or non-existent firmware support.

Even then, Google is trying to help with Project Treble. It remains to be seen if manufacturers care if updates are easier than before as they may simply not want to dedicate any resources at all to updates beyond 2 years or even less for certain devices.
Jack of all trades master of one.
 
It's android. Everything is backwards on android to what i'm used to, 99.9% of apps are worse than iOS versions, spyware is actually a real threat, I avoid google as much as possible.

I moved from Android to iOS back to Android. There are an abundance of excellent apps on Android, so perhaps you just needed to take the time to Google what they are. Spyware is not a threat, especially if you use an ad blocking browser like Kiwi or Brave. I don't use Google services very much, and no one is required to.
 
I moved from Android to iOS back to Android. There are an abundance of excellent apps on Android, so perhaps you just needed to take the time to Google what they are. Spyware is not a threat, especially if you use an ad blocking browser like Kiwi or Brave. I don't use Google services very much, and no one is required to.
Good for you. As a Mac user I have no business using android regardless.
 
I know plenty of Mac users with Android phones. MKBHD is a Mac user and has always used an Android as his daily driver. There's no compulsion to use an iPhone just because you own a Mac.
Well you can dig a hole with a spoon if you want, I’m not going to stop you. I also couldn’t care less what some dude on YouTube whose sole purpose is to generate channel traffic uses or does.
 
1. My S7 is on its third OS update in 2 years, that's same as my iPhone 7.
2. Why are you so hung up on OS updates? Google are updating throughout the year so you get the latest app features anyway.
3. Why are you Americans so hung up on data collection? The fact that Android is on 85.9% market share should tell you the rest of the world just don't care. When we hear you banging on about privacy/data mining we just say.......and?

You'd be hard pressed to find an instance where the majority of people are right about anything. Most of the world uses the metric system and guess what, the metric system is stupid.
 
You'd be hard pressed to find an instance where the majority of people are right about anything. Most of the world uses the metric system and guess what, the metric system is stupid.
Metric system is stupid? Are you serious or sarcastic right now?
 
I moved from Android to iOS back to Android. There are an abundance of excellent apps on Android, so perhaps you just needed to take the time to Google what they are. Spyware is not a threat, especially if you use an ad blocking browser like Kiwi or Brave. I don't use Google services very much, and no one is required to.

Or you can just get an iPhone, restore from a backup and your done.
 
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I specifically state that manufacturers are pretty bad at it and sum it up with caveats so not sure if you mean my comment or something else?

I meant your comments. Your list is good, but it only applies to a Pixel, and only for 2 years (that's taken directly from Google). Your comment about manufacturers being bad, I felt, glazed over that in a lot of cases getting an update especially if you have a carrier locked phone was abysmal at best.
 
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Sadder is that Android 2.3 Gingerbread is still in the chart.

There are a lot of people that choose Android because they can get very cheap or even free phones. These people are also likely to use the same phone until it won't turn on anymore. It shouldn't be a surprise that there are some out there using very old phones with a very old OS on it.
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One of the main reasons I would not want to go back to android. Imagine owning an S9 stuck in Oreo for the next eight months after P is released. No thank you.

Can you imagine every iPhone back to 5S will be getting a speed increase when iOS 12 is released shortly ?

Why wouldn't you get a Pixel if your main concern is updates? Samsung is a terrible choice if that's what you're after. Even my OnePlus 3 from 2016 will probably get 9 before any Samsung.
 
"Android Pie introduces a new gesture-based system interface that's similar to the interface of the iPhone X"

Yeah sure, but unlike Apple, with Google Pie you can turn that off and then you have the Home, Back and yes an actual Menu button instead of the gesture based system.

With Apple it'a all forcing all the time.

 
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This is such a silly metric. If you do it by hardware manufacturer instead of Android as a whole (which would make far more sense given Android's open source nature), you could instead say that "Previous Oreo Release is Installed on 90something% devices" as, unless a user is intentionally not installing updates, then every Nexus and Pixel phone from 2015 onwards would have Oreo installed. Similarly, every Pixel phone (as the cutoff is now between the original Pixel/Pixel XL and the last Nexus phones) would be in line to get the Android Pie update.

If you're looking at it, instead, from a development standpoint, that's something different. That's what you get for open source software that is at the mercy of hardware manufacturers. If the whole point of this object lesson is to point out how slow some otherwise compatible devices are at receiving a major Android upgrade release, then really, this should be a Samsung shaming party as Samsung is, by far, the slowest Android device manufacturer to release upgrades to their TouchWiz Android OS variant for Galaxy phones as well as security updates to the Android platform itself (which, nowadays, ARE separate from actual OS updates).
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Sadder is that Android 2.3 Gingerbread is still in the chart.

There's actually a decent reason for this. Android is installed on MANY devices, not just consumer smartphones and tablets (if any). There are a plethora of specialty devices (think barcode scanners that integrate directly with business management software or hubs for fancy conference room video/phone systems) that run a pretty much un-upgradable version of Android. I have come across two such systems in my IT travels. One was capped at Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the other was capped at Android 4.1 Jellybean.

In both cases, there was no Google play store or functioning dialer or messaging apps. Even e-mail and the gmail app were missing. But that's because Android wasn't there to be used as a consumer device OS wherein you install a bunch of apps and personalize your device. Instead they were solely being used as single purpose devices. And so long as those versions of Android were locked down and you were unable to venture out into the Internets or Google Play to install something nefarious, the fact that you were on an old version of Android did not matter one bit.

So yeah, plenty of devices out there probably still running Android 2.3 or 4.x. I guarantee you most of them aren't actual phones or tablets and/or have a reason why them being at that version and not newer actually matters.

Then again, another way to look at this is that Android 2.3 debuted in December 2010. The contemporary version of iOS at the time was iOS 4. Nothing capable of running iOS 4 is able to run any version past iOS 9 today. In fact, of the devices that could've ran iOS 4, only the Fourth Generation iPod touch, iPhone 4 and 3GS, and iPad 2 even made it past iOS 5, and only the latter-most of those devices even made it past iOS 7. At least Android 2.3 can be still made to do something actually practical in 2018.
 
You're ignoring the fact that some of those resources are used for background tasks and other pieces of the OS. Just because an app doesn't require more resources from one OS version to the next doesn't mean the system as a whole doesn't, also eating into the limited pool available.
I doubt the system is active enough in the average case to warrant the massive CPU and RAM improvements, else the battery life would be a disaster. But either way, if an OS is requiring double the CPU speed every 2 years and double the RAM every 4 just for its background tasks, there's something seriously wrong with it.
 
"Android Pie introduces a new gesture-based system interface that's similar to the interface of the iPhone X"

Yeah sure, but unlike Apple, with Google Pie you can turn that off and then you have the Home, Back and yes an actual Menu button instead of the gesture based system.

With Apple it'a all forcing all the time.

Wow, just wow.
 
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This is such a silly metric. If you do it by hardware manufacturer instead of Android as a whole (which would make far more sense given Android's open source nature), you could instead say that "Previous Oreo Release is Installed on 90something% devices" as, unless a user is intentionally not installing updates, then every Nexus and Pixel phone from 2015 onwards would have Oreo installed. Similarly, every Pixel phone (as the cutoff is now between the original Pixel/Pixel XL and the last Nexus phones) would be in line to get the Android Pie update.

If you're looking at it, instead, from a development standpoint, that's something different. That's what you get for open source software that is at the mercy of hardware manufacturers. If the whole point of this object lesson is to point out how slow some otherwise compatible devices are at receiving a major Android upgrade release, then really, this should be a Samsung shaming party as Samsung is, by far, the slowest Android device manufacturer to release upgrades to their TouchWiz Android OS variant for Galaxy phones as well as security updates to the Android platform itself (which, nowadays, ARE separate from actual OS updates).
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There's actually a decent reason for this. Android is installed on MANY devices, not just consumer smartphones and tablets (if any). There are a plethora of specialty devices (think barcode scanners that integrate directly with business management software or hubs for fancy conference room video/phone systems) that run a pretty much un-upgradable version of Android. I have come across two such systems in my IT travels. One was capped at Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the other was capped at Android 4.1 Jellybean.

In both cases, there was no Google play store or functioning dialer or messaging apps. Even e-mail and the gmail app were missing. But that's because Android wasn't there to be used as a consumer device OS wherein you install a bunch of apps and personalize your device. Instead they were solely being used as single purpose devices. And so long as those versions of Android were locked down and you were unable to venture out into the Internets or Google Play to install something nefarious, the fact that you were on an old version of Android did not matter one bit.

So yeah, plenty of devices out there probably still running Android 2.3 or 4.x. I guarantee you most of them aren't actual phones or tablets and/or have a reason why them being at that version and not newer actually matters.

Then again, another way to look at this is that Android 2.3 debuted in December 2010. The contemporary version of iOS at the time was iOS 4. Nothing capable of running iOS 4 is able to run any version past iOS 9 today. In fact, of the devices that could've ran iOS 4, only the Fourth Generation iPod touch, iPhone 4 and 3GS, and iPad 2 even made it past iOS 5, and only the latter-most of those devices even made it past iOS 7. At least Android 2.3 can be still made to do something actually practical in 2018.
True, but I was under the impression that this chart is only for devices that access the Google Play Store. So wouldn’t these devices not count?
 
What evidence? iOS 11 issues had some problems due to two majorly different versions between the X and 8, but what evidence proves that Apple is deliberately trying to slow down old devices? Throttling phones so that they don't shut down, thus extending the life of the phone? iOS 12 that specifically speeds up devices as far back as 2013? Apple isn't perfect, but I've never felt they didn't properly support their older devices. Can Android say the same?
Evidence is that devices become so slow after iOS upgrades, they basicly become useless.
If your device, no matter which one, is compatible with and up to a certain iOS version, it should’t get so slow.
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And the android devices not suited are obsolete. (planed obsolescence).
But they’re still usable.
Not like obsolete Apple devices that becomes virtually so slow they’re useless.
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This is false. I have a Vivo v3 released in 2016 running lollipop, and there are starting to exist more and more apps requiring at least MM.

In contrast my iPad mini 2 released in 2013 are still fully supported on iOS 11 and then 12. My unsupported iPhone 5 (released in 2012!) running iOS 10 can also still run most apps in the App Store.
Really. I’m on iPad Air 2 with iOS 11, and there are plenty of games that’s not compatible. Even many on the front page of the AppStore right now.
 
Evidence is that devices become so slow after iOS upgrades, they basicly become useless.
If your device, no matter which one, is compatible with and up to a certain iOS version, it should’t get so slow.
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But they’re still usable.
Not like obsolete Apple devices that becomes virtually so slow they’re useless.

Okay, got it. So no evidence at all. I can only speak for myself, but I've owned every iPhone (except from the 5c) and this hasn't happened to me. I think you're taking a small minority of people in a tech forum and equating that to the masses. Lucky for you, iOS 12 is supposed to resolve the performance issues from iOS 11 and continue to support devices from 2013. This is something that makes Apple much much better than Android, long term support.
 
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Evidence is that devices become so slow after iOS upgrades, they basicly become useless.
If your device, no matter which one, is compatible with and up to a certain iOS version, it should’t get so slow.
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But they’re still usable.
Not like obsolete Apple devices that becomes virtually so slow they’re useless.
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Really. I’m on iPad Air 2 with iOS 11, and there are plenty of games that’s not compatible. Even many on the front page of the AppStore right now.
What games are these?
 
Okay, got it. So no evidence at all. I can only speak for myself, but I've owned every iPhone (except from the 5c) and this hasn't happened to me. I think you're taking a small minority of people in a tech forum and equating that to the masses. Lucky for you, iOS 12 is supposed to resolve the performance issues from iOS 11 and continue to support devices from 2013. This is something that makes Apple much much better than Android, long term support.
Okay, got it. So no evidence at all. I can only speak for myself, but I've owned every iPhone (except from the 5c) and this hasn't happened to me. I think you're taking a small minority of people in a tech forum and equating that to the masses. Lucky for you, iOS 12 is supposed to resolve the performance issues from iOS 11 and continue to support devices from 2013. This is something that makes Apple much much better than Android, long term support.
Try iPad 2 on iOS 9. Useless. And all other complaints about both iPads and iPhones becoming slower and laggy. It’s really hard to miss this, and say it only affects a small minority.

Happy you mention iOS 12. The few performance tests I’ve seen of iOS 12 beta on older devices are really just pointing out what I’m saying.
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What games are these?
Just the Racing category alone, which is of my interest, there are 4 games on that page that I can’t play.
 
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