It makes me want to pull my hair out just looking at this mess.
28 thoughts on “Google’s fragmentation problem in one picture”
Why? The majority of the planet can not afford 500 or 600 $ phones. All they care about is to have a phone that works and they don’t care about having the very latest update. It’s a good thing someone supports that low-end phones. An Apple-like highend only product line would be horrible and sad for those people.
Yep – and half of those are probably Samsung devices too…
While still a little more expensive than really cheap Android handsets, Apple still makes Gen -2 handsets available for a very good price. Generally $0 on a plan – and while they’re a little older, they are still comparatively better made than cheap Android models and work almost entirely as fully as the ‘high end only’ ones.
It has nothing to do with high end though. It has to do with companies not bothering to provide updates to older phones. This causes headaches for any developer, as they can’t sell newer apps to owners with older phones.
Those users aren’t buying apps anyway, they only care about Facebook etc.
Cheap Android phones are cheaper than the least expensive iPhone.
And I beielvelly he was initally talking about off contract prices.
So? It still doesn’t excuse the level of fragmentation. No matter how you look at it, these phones are are not that cheap. There is no excuse for this. None.
$100-150 off contract isn’t cheap? And I didn’t excuse it I was saying that people that pay for a $100 phone most likely don’t care about updates. Got something else to complain about? Anything.
Can i say that this is more of an android problem than a google one if we were to view those two as two separate entities? Since Google generally wants to have the widest reach and exposure – ‘fragmentation’ means they can fit in on any nook and crannies in tech. At the expense of the android developers, communities, and users.
Complain? I wasn’t complaining. I was simply saying that a large sect of our society doesn’t consider $100 cheap. And since they don’t consider it a cheap price they expect good or at least decent service. That includes updates and the latest Android OS. I have to say, if I bought a phone for even a $100 I’d expect that I’d get at least a few years of updates. People bank with their phones, shouldn’t you or anyone expect the security of the latest OS to make sure they are safe or at the very least as safe as they can be? That happens with updates, right?
The older generation iPhone don’t get all the updates, Apple withholds some features because of hardware limitations. These Android phones don’t get updates for the same reason, (That and some of these manufacturers are lazy). And about 100,000s to low millions of phones have these security problems compared to the 100s of millions of phones out in the wild. And I would assume that the people who buy these phones don’t care about the updates or else they would stop buying them. I agree with you that most buyers of the higher quality Android phones, like the latest Galaxy and HTC phones are upset but in those cases they get a update with a huge delay, not cut out of the update all together. But in my opinion this cheap Android phones would stop being sold if the buyers of these phones expected regular updates, and that doesn’t seem to be happening because the Android market share is growing/staying consistent instead is shrinking.
While I agree that “Apple withholds some features because of hardware limitations.” I disagree that Android phones don’t get updates for that same reason.
Hardware features are totally different from security updates. Apple still fixes security issues in iOS 6.
What Android Phones don’t get security updates?
AFAIAA, don’t any of the older versions of Android (2.x, 3.x for example) not get security updates? Or, if they do, it depends on whether the manufacturer decides to deploy them or not?
Also, I think you’ll find that the numbers of cheap Android phones far outweigh the premium ones – this is the main reason Android sales are far outstripping everything else.
Of all the users I see around with an Android phone, probably 10% of them would have a premium one.
And when I stay at Super 8, I expect champagne and a butler.
Nobody offers a phone for $100 that includes “a few years of updates”. Indeed, Apple’s “low-end” $400 phone typically doesn’t include “a few years of updates”.
The iPhone 4 ran iOS 7 (barely) but doesn’t run iOS 8. The 4S will run iOS 8, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on iOS 9.
The Gen -2 phones are a ripoff. Even the 5C is a lousy value compared to the 5S.
That was a legitimate question, I don’t know. I hear the horror stories about how X device is vulnerable but the Android malware numbers don’t add up. 10s of Millions devices can’t be vulnerable but only 100s of Thousands (Total phones, with great majority of them being Andriod) are infected. I guess I don’t see/pay attention to the stories about Company X sending out a patch to fix the vulnerability.
And I agree that most Android phones are the cheap ones, I was just saying that those users don’t care about the updates. So if 90% market doesn’t care about the update, what makes the story that 85% of the market isn’t on the latest OS relevant?
My apologies for appearing to illegitimise (?) your question – that wasn’t my intention. I don’t know exactly either
I am assuming based on what I have read. I know, I should hang my head in shame.. 😉
I think the original topic was about the fragmentation of tons of different devices, sizes and versions thereof.
Oh, is that really a problem? Don’t all these apps scale easily.
I think so. “scale easily” seems to be a relative term depending on what your app does and how much time you have.
Again, from what I’ve read – not from personal experience. 🙂
And for the privilege of having a cheap Android phone, consumers get to give away little pieces of themselves, every day.
Okay… How is this related to “Google’s fragmentation problem”?
It isn’t a user issue, just a developer one and Android dev tools [namely Studio] has supported multiple screen layouts for a while. Android itself allows for very easy customizations per screen density and layout for multiple versions.
nonissue
It’s not about fragmentation. It’s one of the reasons why the phones are cheap.
For non-techies, it’s a user issue. Choose the wrong phone from among hundreds of minor differences, and you end up with less.
No store has hundreds of Android phones but sure they could get a phone without a certain feature but if they were looking for a feature they would have asked or read, if they were online.
It isn’t a user issue.
Because of fragmentation i am an iOS dev but as ‘Tvaddic’ says, i wouldn’t rely to selling to a market who is dependent on very cheap phones, they just can’t afford it.
Have you seen the prices of Android devices and which one’s are the highest sellers? Hint: it isn’t the cheap one’s.
Why? The majority of the planet can not afford 500 or 600 $ phones. All they care about is to have a phone that works and they don’t care about having the very latest update. It’s a good thing someone supports that low-end phones. An Apple-like highend only product line would be horrible and sad for those people.
Yep – and half of those are probably Samsung devices too…
While still a little more expensive than really cheap Android handsets, Apple still makes Gen -2 handsets available for a very good price. Generally $0 on a plan – and while they’re a little older, they are still comparatively better made than cheap Android models and work almost entirely as fully as the ‘high end only’ ones.
It has nothing to do with high end though. It has to do with companies not bothering to provide updates to older phones. This causes headaches for any developer, as they can’t sell newer apps to owners with older phones.
Those users aren’t buying apps anyway, they only care about Facebook etc.
Cheap Android phones are cheaper than the least expensive iPhone.
And I beielvelly he was initally talking about off contract prices.
So? It still doesn’t excuse the level of fragmentation. No matter how you look at it, these phones are are not that cheap. There is no excuse for this. None.
$100-150 off contract isn’t cheap? And I didn’t excuse it I was saying that people that pay for a $100 phone most likely don’t care about updates. Got something else to complain about? Anything.
Can i say that this is more of an android problem than a google one if we were to view those two as two separate entities? Since Google generally wants to have the widest reach and exposure – ‘fragmentation’ means they can fit in on any nook and crannies in tech. At the expense of the android developers, communities, and users.
Complain? I wasn’t complaining. I was simply saying that a large sect of our society doesn’t consider $100 cheap. And since they don’t consider it a cheap price they expect good or at least decent service. That includes updates and the latest Android OS. I have to say, if I bought a phone for even a $100 I’d expect that I’d get at least a few years of updates. People bank with their phones, shouldn’t you or anyone expect the security of the latest OS to make sure they are safe or at the very least as safe as they can be? That happens with updates, right?
The older generation iPhone don’t get all the updates, Apple withholds some features because of hardware limitations. These Android phones don’t get updates for the same reason, (That and some of these manufacturers are lazy). And about 100,000s to low millions of phones have these security problems compared to the 100s of millions of phones out in the wild. And I would assume that the people who buy these phones don’t care about the updates or else they would stop buying them. I agree with you that most buyers of the higher quality Android phones, like the latest Galaxy and HTC phones are upset but in those cases they get a update with a huge delay, not cut out of the update all together. But in my opinion this cheap Android phones would stop being sold if the buyers of these phones expected regular updates, and that doesn’t seem to be happening because the Android market share is growing/staying consistent instead is shrinking.
While I agree that “Apple withholds some features because of hardware limitations.” I disagree that Android phones don’t get updates for that same reason.
Hardware features are totally different from security updates. Apple still fixes security issues in iOS 6.
What Android Phones don’t get security updates?
AFAIAA, don’t any of the older versions of Android (2.x, 3.x for example) not get security updates? Or, if they do, it depends on whether the manufacturer decides to deploy them or not?
Also, I think you’ll find that the numbers of cheap Android phones far outweigh the premium ones – this is the main reason Android sales are far outstripping everything else.
Of all the users I see around with an Android phone, probably 10% of them would have a premium one.
And when I stay at Super 8, I expect champagne and a butler.
Nobody offers a phone for $100 that includes “a few years of updates”. Indeed, Apple’s “low-end” $400 phone typically doesn’t include “a few years of updates”.
The iPhone 4 ran iOS 7 (barely) but doesn’t run iOS 8. The 4S will run iOS 8, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on iOS 9.
The Gen -2 phones are a ripoff. Even the 5C is a lousy value compared to the 5S.
That was a legitimate question, I don’t know. I hear the horror stories about how X device is vulnerable but the Android malware numbers don’t add up. 10s of Millions devices can’t be vulnerable but only 100s of Thousands (Total phones, with great majority of them being Andriod) are infected. I guess I don’t see/pay attention to the stories about Company X sending out a patch to fix the vulnerability.
And I agree that most Android phones are the cheap ones, I was just saying that those users don’t care about the updates. So if 90% market doesn’t care about the update, what makes the story that 85% of the market isn’t on the latest OS relevant?
My apologies for appearing to illegitimise (?) your question – that wasn’t my intention. I don’t know exactly either
I am assuming based on what I have read. I know, I should hang my head in shame.. 😉
I think the original topic was about the fragmentation of tons of different devices, sizes and versions thereof.
Oh, is that really a problem? Don’t all these apps scale easily.
I think so. “scale easily” seems to be a relative term depending on what your app does and how much time you have.
Again, from what I’ve read – not from personal experience. 🙂
And for the privilege of having a cheap Android phone, consumers get to give away little pieces of themselves, every day.
Okay… How is this related to “Google’s fragmentation problem”?
It isn’t a user issue, just a developer one and Android dev tools [namely Studio] has supported multiple screen layouts for a while. Android itself allows for very easy customizations per screen density and layout for multiple versions.
nonissue
It’s not about fragmentation. It’s one of the reasons why the phones are cheap.
For non-techies, it’s a user issue. Choose the wrong phone from among hundreds of minor differences, and you end up with less.
No store has hundreds of Android phones but sure they could get a phone without a certain feature but if they were looking for a feature they would have asked or read, if they were online.
It isn’t a user issue.
Because of fragmentation i am an iOS dev but as ‘Tvaddic’ says, i wouldn’t rely to selling to a market who is dependent on very cheap phones, they just can’t afford it.
Have you seen the prices of Android devices and which one’s are the highest sellers? Hint: it isn’t the cheap one’s.