Based on materials from androidcentral.com
There is a simple truth, which is more or less obvious to each of us: a new version Android is not an absolute necessity, because there are not many differences between them. Maybe they will change something on the home screen or in the list of running applications. Maybe they will add a function that we want to have in our device. But the apps we use will look and work the same. What we do in our everyday life – whether we use a messenger, whether we use social networks – does not receive any new features already available to developers. These features will be implemented in few applications – and much later.
And that's bad.
This is very bad, but we cannot do anything about it, because we do not create operating systems or write applications. And there is no fault of the application developers. Apparatuses that do not receive updates quickly harm the platform Android as such.
This prevents us from living not so much. As mentioned above, there is nothing on paper that we cannot live without in reality, and we do not need the latest version to receive technical updates. In reality, if you don't buy a device from Google, updates from the manufacturer usually bring more than a new version Android.
What would a Note 5 user voluntarily give up from the Note 7 interface? Now let's compare with the potential number of users who are waiting – will not wait for the advent of file-by-file data encryption in Android 7.0 (although this feature itself is great and will allow applications to run safer and faster). We need things that we can see. We need app-centric things like Svelte or related notifications. And we are not given either one or the other.
Just look at the number of machines with the latest version on board from the Android Developer Dashboard and you can see why. When only less than 20 or 30% of your potential users will benefit from the innovation, isn't it better to create apps for the other 70+ percent? They will work on devices on the latest version, and you will get time to make changes until the cycle repeats for a new major update. There is nothing difficult in this, but if you are not looking for easy ways, you can do otherwise – not out of necessity, but for the sake of interest.
And this is the real situation around fragmentation Android. The devices on older versions are not a problem – the devices on the new version are the problem. And this is completely absurd. Creating apps for different screen sizes and different processors turned out to be easier than expected, and did not even come close to the complexity that everyone predicted. Working with a variety of versions also turned out to be easier than it seemed. We just take the popular version and ignore the new one. Google has tools that make it easier to back up to older versions, so the user experience on a device with the latest software will be no different from that of any other user. And developers can be understood because it is foolish to go against the market.
There is a solution to the problem, and it is both simple and unrealistic. Devices in need of updating should update faster. The devices whose manufacturer receives our money must be supported for longer. Google should do some careful planning on how to do this for all devices until it becomes fundamentally impossible.
Google, the main driving force Android, does some of this. The update cycle has been reduced to one per calendar year, device manufacturers and large application developers learn early access to changes in the code and API. The 'vanilla versions' are regularly updated and patched. All this should make it easier to update the OS on the device. However, in terms of device support, gentlemen manufacturers are not consistent, and sometimes the reasons for this behavior leave an unpleasant aftertaste. It could have been better. It should be better. But in reality it turns out somehow.
It's not that the companies that make the phones we buy in large numbers are resting on their laurels. Samsung, LG, and HTC have proven they can update devices quite quickly, while others like Huawei and Sony are even making progress and allowing have fun with beta releases. But nothing is done consistently. Some models are lucky, some don't get anything, and a kind of swamp forms in the middle. To release a phone for $ 90 on a Lollipop version and limit it to it is fine if there are no critical bugs, but the most expensive models need to be supported longer and updated faster in order to change the situation. And maybe it's enough, finally, to produce endless middle peasants, maybe it's better to leave resources to support what has already been released? If the device does not claim to be on the list of the best budget devices, it is not necessary to produce it at all, it is better to make sure that the device included in this list remains in it for the next year. Here's a free tip.
Of course, we are not talking about the fact that someone is obliged to change the situation or someone is obliged to at least be able to do it. Android since the advent of WebKit, it has already become the most closed open-source project. Yes, targeting mobile is the explanation, but we have a right to be unhappy with that. Only those who create devices and write software can change the state of affairs, even if only for their own models. They so often resort to market research to tell us that we need thinner phones with a smaller battery, or that dual-SIM phones are in demand only outside the North American market … But in reality, any research will show one thing: we just need more adequate support for what we spend our hard-earned money.
Yes, geeks alone are obsessed with getting the latest update fast. But you don't have to be a geek to want apps with better functionality and machines that don't need to be replaced every 18 months to have access to that functionality.