ICS ecosystem is almost vaporware, it is supposed to be the best release yet, but i actually never saw it. Maybe its the best thing since sliced bread, but if nobody uses it, what exactly is the point?!
Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured.
[EDIT]
I have been an android user since it was essentially released, and have only recently switched to IOS, there are many things that i find absolutely maddening with IOS and find some elements poor in comparison to android.
That said, I grew tired of upgrading my phone on my own. Cyanogen was great, but it became a real hassle, I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily.
I am very disappointed with Android, primarily because its unfulfilled promise. We can blame the phone manufacturers for this mess and we will be right, but a chunk of the blame goes to Google as well, it was blind to entrenched interests, and now the users are paying the price. It smacks of arrogance, and lack of strategy.
>ICS ecosystem is almost vaporware, it is supposed to be the best release yet, but i actually never saw it. Maybe its the best thing since sliced bread, but if nobody uses it, what exactly is the point?!
Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured.
There are two kinds of Android users in this world - those who care about this issue, and those who don't. The former tend to be the innovators and early adopters who pay attention to every new OS release and whatnot, the latter are the mainstream users who just want a working phone and don't follow the tech rags and don't really care about the details.
So what I wonder is, if you're in the former group, why buy any Android phone other than a Nexus variant straight from Google, which is the only one guaranteed to get the latest greatest OS updates as painlessly as possible? I'm in that group, and I couldn't imagine buying some mangled, bloated carrier-modified version of Android. Is it just the marginally better hardware specs that attract people?
Long time android owner and now Galaxy Nexus owner here:
I... Hate... This... Phone...
And here I could deliver a scathing rant about the camera locking up the phone and refusing to properly focus. Or I could go on about the constant gmail, navigator, and browser crashes, the horrid battery life (even in 3G with the "extended" battery) and yeesh I'll just stop here...
And don't get me started about my Galaxy Tab 10.1 still stuck on 3.2 6 months after the release of ICS.
So why did I buy the Nexus? Because I figured the much-vaunted 2011 google phone would get great support. But if this is the best they can manage, sign me up for a Windows phone. More realistically, I'm going IOS on the next spin. Android is dead to me.
Long time android owner and Galaxy Nexus owner here:
I... Love... This... Phone...
It takes beautiful pictures at an amazing speed, I get absolutely 0 crashes using multiple different applications, battery ALWAYS lasts at least the whole day no matter how hard I use it, and I love every single features ICS has to offer. I am in no way jealous of anything my iPhone friends can do with their phone and I will gladly buy another Nexus device when I'll decide to change phone.
I just wanted to offer the different experience I've had...
1. Whatever iOS 6 has and ICS does not, list it to be on ICS via third party.
2. Don't do third party additions on the iOS 6 column as if there are no third party apps on that platform.
Might as well say, "Android is open-source and since the phones are Turing machines Android does everything ever possible by a computer through third-party support. Maybe it's a painful experience but it does do it." More than that, I'm tired of looking at such comparisons that boil down features to bullet points. Imagine BlackBerry running the following ad after the announcement of the iPhone in 2007:
BlackBerry already offers more that what is coming in the iPhone.
Open websites, send messages, make phone calls, read your email.
Disclaimer: I got my first iPhone this February after being a Nexus user for more than 2 years. And while my Nexus technically did everything that the iPhone does it feels very painful to use. Not just the scrolling. I don't even want to go into details but there definitely are people who don't care about such things and that's perfectly fine.
ICS scrolling is smooth and responsive for me, even on rather lower-end devices. Gingerbread definitely had some scrolling issues, but they've pretty much been fixed.
Something is definitely wrong with his particular phone. I don't have any of those problems either.
If he's running a custom ROM he should find a better one or return to stock. If that's not the case, a warranty replacement is in order because something is definitely faulty with his hardware.
1. Have a phone/tablet you don't like and complain about it
2. Get a different phone/tablet that you do like.
3. Install a custom ROM.
I have a Galaxy Nexus and the Tab 10.1. Installing AOKP made a huge difference, regarding the things you mentioned and many more. My Tab 10.1 is a great tablet now because of it, and I hated TouchWiz while I had it.
This segmentation for two kinds of Android users is exactly the problem. If you are an IOS user, whether a poweruser or not, you will get the latest upgrade and a range of new features by default. This delights users, they don't have to care about the issue to be satisfied with the device.
Perhaps I am lazy, perhaps I am somewhere in between those two archetypes you mention. I want to hold the device i buy before i buy it, as such i need to go to my provider store and see it, dare i say, touch it. This fact alone eliminates the option of seeing the nexus variant.
You don't have to follow the Techrags or details to want the latest and greatest.
Looking at the big red 1 on both my parents' iPhones' Settings app (not mention the much higher numbers on the App Store app) when I visited them this weekend, I imagine the same segmentation exist on iOS. Different proportions and easier upgradability on iOS, but the basic idea is the same on both platforms. If you want updates, you are able to get them. If not, and most don't, it is no loss to anyone but developers and security.
You can imagine the same segmentation, but you'd be wrong about the end result. 4/5 of iPhone users have updated to 5, while less than 1/10 of Android have updated to 4.
As a service provider, we see the device stats in our logs across tens of millions of users, and the numbers line up with Apple's slide: over 80% of iOS devices are updated to iOS 5, and under 7% of Android devices are on Android 4.
And really, it's a lot worse than that, with variations in the 2.x releases, even within the 2.3.x releases, affecting whether devices are able to stream video properly or not.
For example, you can email yourself an apk that of a program that was removed from Google Play and install it (I did this - developer decided it wasn't worth his time to support the app but was kind enough to send me the file).
To me that's an example of a power user - something that IOS does not allow.
To take it further - I imagine that one can't be a power user of an IOS no more than you can be a power user of a toaster - there is one way to insert and remove the bread, equally available to all.
If you are an IOS user, whether a poweruser or not, you will get the latest upgrade and a range of new features by default.
If you're an IOS user, you're paying the comparable price of the latest nexus phone. If you buy the nexus instead of an iPhone, you WILL get the latest upgrade and range of new features by default. Let's keep a similar comparison please.
I have a Nexus S for exactly this reason, and yet I had to wait well over 6 months to get ICS. It's embarrassing that they can't push out a new OS to their own phones on time.
I have a Nexus S (4G Sprint variant). I got the update to ICS a couple months back and the phone has become more and more unstable. The same thing seemed to happen with the updates my older HTC phone got as well. My experience with Android devices thus far can be summed up in 3 words:
But we doesn't the second group care? I believe it's simply because they don't know what is out there. Are you claiming that they would t care if they knew that a better alternative existed? I was an early android adopter, I now own an iPhone because it is simply better. I've never used ICS because the phone I had was never going to see an update. The phone I had, which was less than a year old.
Hell, the 3GS is getting iOS 6. What 3 year old Android phone will get ICS? Like you said, I'm guessing not many if any at all. Agreeing with your point, Android is heavily fragmented, with phone manufacturers having the final say on which software gets deployed to their phones. Many of them are going to use new OS version to force software upgrades
What does this mean? iOS6? What is ICS?
(don't answer those questions.. I know what ICS is)
My point is the average user isn't sitting there with their Galaxy-Titan-whatever in their hands feverishly checking what version of Android they're running and yelling "Where is my ICS!!" They're posting to Facebook, emailing, tweeting, searching for restaurants..etc
It's all about features.. and the fact is that iOS6 is catching up with Android 2.2... not 4.0
No, of course not, but they do see me do something on ICS that you can't otherwise do and they say, "Wait a minute? I thought you had Android. You do? Then why can't I do that!" followed by frustration and anger.
Like what, specifically? ICS is great, but it's mostly improvements under the hood and window dressing--things that in the grand scheme of things really don't matter. 99% of the things that frustrate me about my Android phone are hardware-related (too little RAM, slow camera, TPM) and no software update can solve those. Yeah, the browser and calendar are improved.
That's your own fault then. Android offers a variety of hardware configurations, and you opted for a low-end one.
If you're in America, I have even less pity. The $200 price difference between some low-end free-on-contract smartphone and the $200 Galaxy Nexus or HTC One X is near negligible when you consider the price of the voice+data+messaging plan over the course of a 2 year contract.
Actually, no I didn't, dude. My phone's 2+ years old and was a high-end eclair-era device. But I also wasn't complaining and I don't need or want your pity.
It's really unfair to call what the 3GS gets "iOS 6." Apple's been doing this for awhile; calling maintenance upgrades mainline upgrades while not actually delivering all the features.
Keep in mind the problem of vendor recalcitrance is much less of an issue for an interested Android user. You can literally reflash your phone to a mod with an app from your phone. You don't even necessarily need to plug it in to anything.
That's a pretty packed up qualification there. Users that interested are not, have not been, and will not be par for the course on the Android platform.
Moreover, the in-app phone flashing is not something every Android phone can do. I speak from experience owning an Android phone that wouldn't play ball in this regard.
> That's a pretty packed up qualification there. Users that interested are not, have not been, and will not be par for the course on the Android platform.
If this is the metric, then do you think the average iPhone user cares about what version of iOS they have? So many iPhone users are shocked when you walk up and double tap on the home button.
For the people who care on Android, there is a way to upgrade. For the people who don't care, there change is meaningless.
While this is a dog's dinner compared to the great adoption rates on new phones and new versions of iOS, it's worth mentioning.
Absolutely not. I'm just tired of hearing that "interested users" line used as a general apology for the Android platform. I figured the same thing went without saying for iOS, since the perception of the platform is such.
Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured.
Yes, but how important is this really in practice? With both platforms approaching maturity deploying major OS updates OTA is going to be less important.
Google can ride the natural device upgrade cycle to get out new versions. If they can make the browser and email client and a few other key apps independent of the OS they can rev those a lot faster. No doubt they'd like to have Apple's upgrade muscle but I'm not convinced they really need it in the long term.
It's pretty important to user satisfaction that Joe can say to Sally "You have an iPhone, right? Check out what they can do now!" And Sally be able to say "Mine does that too? Awesome!"
As opposed to Android, where Joe and Sally can barely help one another through the various UI skins half the time, let alone share enjoyment in cool new software features on devices purchased mere months apart.
(Sure, with iOS there are updates and features that don't get patched into older devices. But those situations are vanishingly few compared to Android.)
So, as an answer to the various times this question has been posed in this thread: Yes. It's a big deal to normal users that reasonably contemporary devices behave the same and generally have the same software features. And it's a very big deal for them to find out they bought the 'wrong' phone, not six months ago, because they got a model that will likely never get the cool new software feature their friend just showed them.
The degree to which updates don't matter, is the degree to which the users are barely interested in the device at all and use them as little more than a flip phone with better email and browser.
Which, while accurate for a certain population of users, hardly supports the relevance of any possible Android feature advantage.
It's pretty important to user satisfaction that Joe can say to Sally "You have an iPhone, right? Check out what they can do now!" And Sally be able to say "Mine does that too? Awesome!"
Sally won't be able to do Turn by turn if she has a 3GS or iPhone 4, whereas even out of date Android's on 1.6 can.
"Sure, with iOS there are updates and features that don't get patched into older devices. But those situations are vanishingly few compared to Android."
But the "vanishingly few" are often the most significant features of a particular years iOS upgrade, whereas Google's 1st party apps are for the most part decoupled with the major differences between 4.X and 2.X being UI.
The situation is much more nuanced than you state.
No, they can't ride the natural device upgrade cycle to get out new versions because there is no requirement for new devices to install the newest version. Apple on the other hand, can ride the device upgrade cycle because when you go pick up a new phone at the Apple store it is running the newest version of the operating system, and the features get rolled out to everyone.
I would argue that as new features in newer versions of operating systems become more and more of a spectacle that people everywhere, not just geeks are watching, Pushing major OS updates becomes more and more important.
If you're going to show off a new feature to the world, it's nice if most people can actually get at it.
there is no requirement for new devices to install the newest version.
No, but only the really low-end Android phones are coming out with 2.x anymore and that number is going to dwindle quickly over the next year. And ICS is not as crucial as some people make it out to be since 2.x is a decent platform already and a lot of features have been backported.
The international versions of the S2 and the Note have already been updated to ICS, as have many of the carrier versions (the AT&T Note and Epic 4G Touch, at least).
I'm not saying that we've seen the last word in mobile operating systems, but neither iOS nor Android have made any fundamental UX changes in the last few major updates.
If "last few major updates" means, say, at least 2 major updates, I believe you've been hiding under a "few major rocks", because that's certainly not the case. Both platforms have seen tremendous UX changes/improvements.
Like what? Yes there have been some enhancements but the fundamental UI vocabulary and representation is the same. iOS was a big leap forward from the alternatives in 2007. Nothing we've seen since has been even close to as radical.
I find it really fundamental to swipe left and right to change the foregrounded app, and have the other apps still there where I left them when I swipe back. That's a huge huge change, and takes it from toy to tool.
Agree that notifications pull down and similar are gravy, but tasty gravy nonetheless.
It's hard to compare getting ICS on legacy phones to getting iOS 6 on your iPhone 4S. Of course, first gen Android devices aren't going to be able to run ICS, but neither will first gen iOS devices. iOS 6 is not going to be on the original iPad, the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G.
I bought a Galaxy SII last October - about a week or so before the Galaxy Nexus was released - and here I am without an ICS. T-Mobile JUST announced support for it, saying it would be here within a week. The only update I have received was a patch update, with minor UI changes.
Even depending upon CyanogenMod has failed me. T-Mobile loves getting non-standard devices and then not releasing drivers that could help boost their own popularity - likely for IP reasons. I have owned dev phones in the past, and this was my first consumer device, and coincidentally the first Android device that I could not easily unlock and update on my own.
No, you can't compare a first gen Android device, but you sure as hell can compare a device more powerful than some netbooks.
None of the Apple devices that you mentioned are sold at retail anymore. How many Android devices that are being sold in stores can't get access to the latest operating system update?
> _I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily._
As a loyal TMo G2 (stock Froyo) owner, I wholeheartedly agree with that opinion. As other replies called out, TMo has a knack for luring you in and never releasing OS updates.
That said, I'm very happy running my "legacy" Froyo OS: My GPS is fast and spot-on, data pipe is 4G-wide, and my bit-laggy camera app is supplemented by dedicated hardware for anything cleaner than "LOL quality."
I agree with that statement about Tmobile, but if you just stick with the reference devices (G1, Nexus, Nexus S, Nexus Galaxy,) you get all the updates from Google as they're released.
I've stuck with the Google reference models since the G1, and while I'm usually behind on "what's new" (I'm currently on a Nexus S, while the Nexus Galaxy has been out for awhile now), my wife is constantly buying the 'new' Android hotness, and is perennially jealous of my phone, even when it's older and has less features.
I get the software updates faster, everything works, and nothing has been mucked with, ala Blur or whatever. Meanwhile her phone is dual core, has HDMI out, and is better on paper, but crashes often, becomes unresponsive and lags on Android updates.
The point remains - they're adding a bunch of features for free and most users will benefit from them. I'm far more interested in account unification and improvements to the phone app than 3D maps. Your inference that the update is a dud for older devices doesn't ring true.
Sorry, I should've said "What's your point?" instead of "What's the point (in the update)", the first question is what I meant.
I don't see the OPs point as 3GSs getting the update aren't better off than Android devices on 2.3 which still have access to many backported Android APIs.
Some features are missing from the compatibility library, but have been made up by open source projects such as ActionBar Sherlock (which is great by the way if anyone hasn't tried it out yet).
I also happen to develop for Android, and yes, the ACL does help, but it's still a PITA to develop an app which will look the same on all devices. You will have to use ActionBar Sherlock (or use custom layouts if you want special features in there), style every single control, and test, test, test. Apple's decision to include the 3GS is IMHO a VERY clever one, enabling app developers to very soon use iOS6 as min target. iOS6 might hit 75% marketshare within weeks after release (only leaving out a few iPad 1s which can't upgrade from iOS5), leaving devs only with iOS 5 and 6 to support - and it's very doable to include 6's features and fall back to 5er APIs if necessary. On Android you would need to support 2.2, 2.3, 3.x, and 4.x to reach a similar user base percentage (http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...). Also, it does not pay off yet to use 4.x features, that's only 7% currently. All those 3000+ different cheap Android devices with API version <= 2.3 are an obstacle for app innovation.
Basically all those features are available for Gingerbread and Froyo and your chances of getting turn-by-turn in iOS6 from Apple are nil if you buy an iPhone 4 or 3GS in the next few months. So there might be more nuance to this than you let on.
Like 250 million iOS users out of 365 can't use 2 of the biggest features of iOS - Siri and the 3D Maps (and also turn by turn I believe). How is that for fragmentation?
Yes, Apple does port an iOS version to most devices, and yes manufacturers have been very slow with ICS, but Apple doesn't push all the features when they port the OS to older hardware either, and sometime they are major features.
You have to remember that apple makes software to sell hardware. If they didn't restrict some features to the newest hardware fewer people would upgrade. Oh and the experience may not be as nice...
I have less than a year old (when I bought it) Android device. Running 2.2. It's not Android's fault (perhaps slightly), it's device manufacturers fault. And many of them suck in this.
Your chances of getting ICS on your legacy device are virtually zero. whereas getting IOS 6 on the iphone 4S is assured.
[EDIT] I have been an android user since it was essentially released, and have only recently switched to IOS, there are many things that i find absolutely maddening with IOS and find some elements poor in comparison to android.
That said, I grew tired of upgrading my phone on my own. Cyanogen was great, but it became a real hassle, I just want a device that works, and upgrades easily.
I am very disappointed with Android, primarily because its unfulfilled promise. We can blame the phone manufacturers for this mess and we will be right, but a chunk of the blame goes to Google as well, it was blind to entrenched interests, and now the users are paying the price. It smacks of arrogance, and lack of strategy.