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A Look at the Amount of Time Smartphone Vendors Have Taken To Roll out Major Android Updates To Their Handsets, and How Things Are Beginning To Improve (androidauthority.com) 131

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Most Android smartphone vendors have been notorious for the time they take to roll out the newest Android OS updates to their respective handsets. To tackle this, Google in 2017 announced Project Treble, which bypasses some middlemen in delivering new updates to consumers. With Project Treble now supported by all Android phone makers, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than before. To test this, news blog AndroidAuthority looked at the data to see where things stand. From the report: On average, Nougat updates took about 192 days to reach key devices, while Oreo was slightly faster at 170. Android Pie updates hit devices much faster, averaging just 118 days from Google's launch to significant OEM rollout. That's a significant improvement, though we're still waiting on updates from LG and HTC, which could drag this average back up. Most manufacturers are faster at providing updates now, but a few are slower. Huawei, Samsung, and Xiaomi were noticeably quicker this time around, bringing updates to key devices before the end of 2018. OnePlus and Sony were especially fast, but they've always been speedier than most. Disappointingly, Motorola has rolled out updates to its flagship Z series slower over the last few years.
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A Look at the Amount of Time Smartphone Vendors Have Taken To Roll out Major Android Updates To Their Handsets, and How Things A More

A Look at the Amount of Time Smartphone Vendors Have Taken To Roll out Major Android Updates To Their Handsets, and How Things A

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  • This is about Lock In (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance.level4@org> on Sunday January 20, 2019 @11:57AM (#57991808) Journal
    I wish Google still "Don't be evil."

    I had a business selling G1 (Still an excellent form factor I hope they bring it back.) and I would Root and Superuser them and install custom Roms.

    They were really amazing, the early Android modding scene had a lot of potential.
    25% better battery life.
    40% better performance.
    More customization options.
    Excellent GUIs.

    But I ramble.

    Anyway nowadays it's hard to Root and get SuperUser and I don't understand why.

    It's actually put a lifespan on Android which is sad.

    Now Android is like Facebook, constantly getting worse and losing sight of what made it better than alternatives.

    I don't want to be one of those old people who think things were better in the past, give me something to work with.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Desler ( 1608317 )

      I wish Google still "Don't be evil."

      How about you stop being naive instead of falling for an informal motto that was not legally-binding in any way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        I wish Google still "Don't be evil."

        How about you stop being naive instead of falling for an informal motto that was not legally-binding in any way.

        There's nothing wrong with expecting companies to abide by their publicly stated position, if a company is going to publicly say they are going to do something, they should follow through. Though they've already removed "Don't be evil" from their code of conduct, so it's moot anyway.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Desler ( 1608317 )

          But it wasn't a public position. It was an informal motto that they used to trick gullible people into thinking they were something they weren't. Google has always put money ahead of ethics. That anyone believed otherwise is silly.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hawguy ( 1600213 )

            But it wasn't a public position. It was an informal motto that they used to trick gullible people into thinking they were something they weren't. Google has always put money ahead of ethics. That anyone believed otherwise is silly.

            They included it in their S-1 filing prior to their IPO.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      Anyway nowadays it's hard to Root and get SuperUser and I don't understand why.

      Seems pretty straightforward:

      https://www.xda-developers.com... [xda-developers.com]

      It's not trivial and should not be since only those that know what they are doing should root their phone.

    • I still won't buy a phone until a legitimate root method exists for that model.

    • Re:This is about Lock In (Score:5, Informative)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday January 20, 2019 @06:58PM (#57993512) Journal

      Anyway nowadays it's hard to Root and get SuperUser and I don't understand why.

      This is my fault. Not only mine, not even mostly mine, but definitely my team's fault -- and I, personally, have a little of the blame. So that makes me a good person to explain.

      First, let me point out that my teammates and I have no interest in preventing you from rooting your device. None whatsoever. We are skeptical that you can make good use of root without compromising your own security, but we also believe that if you want to compromise your security, you should be free to do so!

      So, if we don't hate rooting, why have we made it hard?

      We haven't, exactly. Let me explain.

      Let's start with the bootloader. If your device has a locked bootloader (note that this is completely different from carrier locking, AKA SIM locking, which is what people usually mean when they talk about an Android device that is locked or unlocked), then you may not install your own software on it. All of the devices from Google ship with bootloaders that can be unlocked, because we think people should be able to do what they want with their devices. Most other Android device makers feel differently about this and ship bootloaders that cannot be unlocked. Some of them will sell you a "developer edition" that is unlockable.

      It's always been this way. Nexus/Pixel devices have always been unlockable, most others have not. Those G1s you were rooting almost certainly did not have unlockable bootloaders. So... how did you root them?

      You exploited vulnerabilities. There were lots of them. There was no software integrity checking, so once you exploited a vulnerability you were able to modify the system and keep it in the exploited state.

      These vulnerabilities were nice for you because they let you root. They were also nice for anyone who wanted to hack into your phone and get your personal data out. Useful to good guys, but also to bad guys. On balance, that's a bad thing.

      What we did was to fix a lot of vulnerabilities. Not all; no software system of substantial size will ever be free of vulnerabilities. Recognizing that, we built defense in depth. SELinux is a big component of this defense in depth. Today in Android it's almost unheard of to find a single vulnerability that allows the attacker to pwn the entire system. Vulnerabilities still exist, but now attackers need long exploit chains. They use one vulnerability to open a chink in a part of the system that then lets them find and exploit another vulnerability, and so on, until they finally get to the data they're trying to get, or -- better yet -- pop the kernel. Root isn't good enough any more; for free reign of the system you need to pop the kernel and disable SELinux. Today's exploit chains often use five to ten separate vulnerabilities, because less than that doesn't do you any good. Working exploit chains for major device models sell for $1M+ on black markets. That's because they're hard to find.

      In addition to that, we also added verified boot, so that every piece of the system software is validated as its loaded. This means that once you find and exploit a long chain of vulnerabilities to get control, you can't just change the system software so that you always have it, because if you modify the system the device won't work any more. You have to re-exploit the vulnerabilities after every boot. (Note that a new class of techniques makes so-called "systemless root" possible; which gives you persistent root without changing the system. We're shutting those down, too.)

      In addition to that, we got much more aggressive about making device makers patch the vulnerabilities. So if you find a sequence of vulns that gets you control, you'd better keep it secret or it'll stop working after the next update. Oh, and we also made it basically impossible to install an older version of the software to get back to a version that had known vulnerabilities you could use.

      That's a small taste; a lot m

      • Why the fuck did you decide to _force_ Android Pie users to waste space on their home screen with that garbagey "At A Glance" widget? And you now _force_ users to have the Google search bar on the home screen - and _force_ it to be at the bottom.

        It's bad enough when you futz up my user experience just because you can. But it's inexcusable when you make it impossible to disable your annoying douchebaggery.

        The Android Pie update was a big old middle finger to users. WTF, Google?

        • Sorry, I have nothing to do with any of that. But, can you not still install a custom launcher and change it however you want? Your complaints are all about the lack of configurability of the default launcher... but that's hardly your only option.

          • "Your complaints are all about the lack of configurability of the default launcher"

            No, no, no, _NO_. My complaints are all about Big Brother Google forcing users to have an experience they don't want. And the Googly "fuck you, pleb, that's why" attitude underlying that coercion.

            It's really obvious that Google holds us users/"products" in abject contempt. Once upon a time I was a big fan and advocate of Google's software, including Android. No more.

            It's time for Uncle Sam to break up Alphabet.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Given your UID, I'm guessing we're probably around the same age, having grown up with early x86 machines, dos, os/2, slackware, etc.

          I suspect so. I'm 50.

          Not to go all nostalgic, but "those were the days." We were free to explore, learn, tinker, fix, and break. We could output directly to ioports and trigger interrupts as a matter of course. I learned more about what makes a computer compute as a kid with a beat up old 8086 than I have as an adult (both in University and professionally).

          Yep, but the openness of the systems isn't the only thing that has changed in the last 30-40 years. When we were tinkering, computers were rare, little-used and isolated. Now they're ubiquitous, so heavily-used they're almost a brain expansion pack and they're networked all of the time. The fact is that the vast, vast majority of computer users -- especially of mobile devices -- know absolutely nothing about how they work, and have no interest at all in learning, exploring, tinkering.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by 0ld_d0g ( 923931 )

        You make some valid points, but..

        because we think people should be able to do what they want with their devices.

        You should add the caveat, - "as long as Google can mine the users data". That is the only thing Google really cares about. In a sense, allowing vulnerabilities means that there's competition to get to the data. It makes sense in other contexts too as to why Google is never going to allow users to encrypt the Inbox.

        We don't mind you guys fixing vulnerabilities, or even employing dark patterns across your products, or even trying to trick people to use your products - Hey, it

        • You make some valid points, but..

          because we think people should be able to do what they want with their devices.

          You should add the caveat, - "as long as Google can mine the users data". That is the only thing Google really cares about.

          It's really not.

          First, let me make clear that I work on Android. This is completely separate from the Google Apps. From my team's perspective, Google is just another app developer (though obviously a very influential one).

          The Android system provldes no special access to Google. None whatsoever. If you want to scoff, please point me to the Google-data-mining hooks in AOSP.

          Further, Google's apps are not special to Android. They cannot get any data from any other apps that don't choose to share it wit

          • I can't believe you haven't received 20 responses saying thank you for eloquently sharing your knowledge, experiences, and well-informed opinions. And thank you for making Android more secure, and thank you for entertaining some of these imo misguided responses.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by 0ld_d0g ( 923931 )

            OTOH, it's also a very broad, deep and high-quality set of services, for which users pay nothing, in dollars. The deal is you trade the ability for Google to target ads to your eyeballs in exchange for all of that. If you think that's a bad deal, you're completely free to opt out. Buy an unlockable device, unlock it, remove all the Google apps, use a different search engine, don't use gmail, etc.

            Well sure. I do my best. I try to avoid Google products as much as possible. I've switched to FF. Tried switching to bing, buts its terrible for technical searches. I don't use ad blockers because I'd rather just not visit a website than block ads.

            Anyway, my point is that your claim is wrong. Google does allow you to encrypt the inbox... Google just doesn't encourage it. A different sort of company would ban it.

            Okay but then at that point "Gmail" is just a folder to store mbox data. You cannot decrypt messages using the web client AFAIK.

            (Yes, I recognize I'm being a little disingenuous here. Most people couldn't actually do what I describe. But it is possible, and many Google engineers put in a lot of extra work to make sure that it continues being possible.)

            At the same time, many other Google engineers put in a lot of extra work to make AOSP useless without Google's closed-source play servic

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Uh huh... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Desler ( 1608317 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:03PM (#57991838)

    With Project Treble now supported by all Android phone makers, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than before.

    This is a rather interesting edit of a sentence from the actual linked article which says:

    With Project Treble now supported by key Android flagships, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than ever before.

    msmash, you do realize that the two versions do mot mean the same thing, right?

    • With Project Treble now supported by all Android phone makers, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than before.

      This is a rather interesting edit of a sentence from the actual linked article which says:

      With Project Treble now supported by key Android flagships, in theory updates should roll out to us faster than ever before.

      msmash, you do realize that the two versions do mot mean the same thing, right?

      Whatever msmash did or didn't mean, here's the reality of the situation: Treble was mandated by Google for all devices that initially launched with Oreo (8.0) or later. If you buy a device that once ran Nougat or below, it probably doesn't support Treble. If you buy a newer device model that never ran anything pre-Oreo, it does.

  • You don't want them. Yet they still come.

  • Planned Obsolescence (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Planned Obsolescence isn't going anywhere. Its what keeps device makers in business.

  • Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:18PM (#57991894)

    Look, it’s great that updates are available sooner on “key devices”, but the fact that this is being cited as something praiseworthy is rather indicative of how broken the situation remains. It took 192 days on average for Nougat to even become available on a subset of devices. 170 for Oreo. 118 for Pie. Meanwhile, iOS has always taken 0 days: it was available to all compatible devices immediately upon its release.

    And availability is just half the problem. If availability is staggered, you have a harder time encouraging people to update (or even making them aware of the update), which hampers the deployment rate. Improving the speed of deployment needs to be the end goal. Improving availability is just a necessary step towards clearing hurdles that are in the way.

    • Re:Meanwhile... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:31PM (#57991976)
      I think that you're leaving out something even more important which is that for a lot of devices, the update will never be made available nor are there even any plans to make it available that only end up getting canceled. At some point all hardware hits end of life, but for a lot of Android phones that's artificially lower than it should be.

      But on the flip side, I don't think you get to 0 without having the same kind of control that Apple exhibits, and I'm not sure that's something that would be good for Android. If you're careful with your own personal choice of which device to buy, you can get that immediately availability for yourself. It may require extra effort on your part, but that's the cost of the greater freedom that Android affords.

      • Re: Meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cyber-vandal ( 148830 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:46PM (#57992060) Homepage

        The price you pay for "freedom" is being constantly vulnerable unless you buy a new flagship phone every year plus having Google spying on you constantly. Both options in the smartphone market are shit but I'll go with the one that's still getting updates after 5 years. There are no Android phones that have that option.

        • Re: Meanwhile... (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          My galaxy s5 is still getting updates and in two months that'll be the 5 year mark.

          • What OS is it running?

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Desler ( 1608317 )

            BS. The last major OS version for the S5 that was officially released by Samsung was Android 6.0.1 which was released by Google 3.5 years ago. So you're either falsely conflating security updates with OS upgrades (you know, the topic of the submission) or you're using a third-party ROM when this whole topic is about first-party support.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Solandri ( 704621 )

        But on the flip side, I don't think you get to 0 without having the same kind of control that Apple exhibits,

        Technically, Apple's iOS release are not available on their phones in 0 days.

        • Apple's software guys are happy with all the feature changes they want to make to iOS. This is analogous to Google making a new version of Android available.
        • Apple then tests it internally on their current, upcoming, and older phones to make sure everything still works. If something doesn't work, the software guys have

        • I that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Android offers a public beta program (much like Apple) which does test pre-releases against a set of eligible Android devices with the stated purpose of identifying both software and hardware incompatibilities.

          However for those Android devices which are not beta-eligible, your statement is true.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The issue with the way Apple does it is that you are forced to stay on the latest version if you want all the security updates. On Android they have separated out most of the core OS services and they get patched separately for security issues.

          If you don't want the latest version of iOS, perhaps because it makes your device very slow, you have to accept no security patches too.

      • At some point all hardware hits end of life, but for a lot of Android phones that's artificially lower than it should be.

        What makes you link lack of OS update together with end of life? There are as far as I know no plans for my device to get Android Pie. That doesn't mean it's end of life. Only last week I got the January 2019 security patch so clearly my device is still very much in service despite not getting OS upgrade.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        This is a very common misunderstanding about Android versions.

        The major named versions are feature updates. Just because you don't get them, doesn't mean you are not getting security updates, or app updates including the core Android stuff like the browser and Play Store.

        Feature updates are a mixed blessing. One the one hand, you might get new features... On the other hand, you phone works differently to the way it was when you bought it, and a lot of people hate that. it might also get slower or have less

    • What you said rings true of the early smartphone era where updates actually mattered. These days frankly, who gives a damn. In the past OS updates were critical. Killer features were added. Security updates came through the OS updates. It was all quite important. But these days ...

      Security updates are now decoupled from the OS updates. I've not seen a monthly security patch come through more than 2 weeks after they were released.

      I'm on Oreo. I don't know if there's plans to bring Pie to my device. I also do

  • Samsung is bad... (Score:3)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:21PM (#57991916) Homepage

    The Galaxy S3 was my last Samsung "flagship". Not only was it stupidly expensive for what it was, but the updates were slow to come and they seemed to leave the phone worse-off. I'm now settled with the Xiaomi Mi Mix line (switched from the cheaper but almost as good Mi line partly because of supporting T-Mobile LTE when I travel to the US), cheaper, better in most respects and updates don't leave the phone worse off. And according to TFA the updates come quicker too, although if that was my main concern I'd probably be looking at Android One phones or something like that...

    • My only (and unique) "flagship" was (and still is) a S5, buyed refurbished after 2 years of the launch, mainly by the removable battery and http://lineageos.org/ [lineageos.org] :P

    • The Galaxy S3 was my last Samsung "flagship". Not only was it stupidly expensive for what it was, but the updates were slow to come and they seemed to leave the phone worse-off.

      A LOT has changed across all vendors in the Android landscape. Judging any by their past (including both good and bad points) really doesn't help you make the right choice. Vendors have very much met each other with mediocrity. Samsung appear to be rolling out security updates as fast as Google, and Google appear to ever more be obsoleting their hardware (reads: not releasing OS upgrades) as much as other OEMs.

      And updates really haven't left phones worse off since around Lollipop/Marshmallow when Google act

  • Tablets? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Does this cover Android-based tablets?

    Even if it does...what I'm getting from this is that even my most recent Android device--running 6.0 (Marshmallow) is eventually going to go to its grave with the exact same OS it was born with. The apps get updated all the time (to the point of being more annoying than Windows is with its updates), but the OS is the same one it was shipped with, still susceptible to countless vulnerabilities that have been discovered and long fixed elsewhere.

    I guess I should forget ab

  • What users see: "Treble lets them get me updates 2x faster" What LG's management sees: "Treble lets me fire half my update staff and still meet existing goals"

    • Most bizarre about LG is that they update their hardware faster than their software. The V series has had three releases in 18 months. OS upgrades? None for at least the last two.

  • Where is My Update?? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Where is my update for my Samsung Galaxy Player?
    It's still using Gingerbread.

  • I have a Samsung Note 8, the security patch is from October 1, 2018 and I got an old 8.0.0 Android... I just check and Samsung said that my phone is up to date with the last software! Yeah! Right !

  • Interesting how the Moto Z got Oreo after 129 days. I have a Moto G5 Plus and Motorola was vapor-waring Oreo for over a year. Oreo was released August 2017 and my phone didn't get Oreo until November 2018, after at least a year of "It's coming in two months, we promise!"
  • Read this article on Project Treble: ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com]

    A quote:

    Iliyan Malchev: With Treble, the operating system has separated to the adaptation layers that tailor down to the hardware. And that's still the case, but the devil is in the details. There's a ton of nuance that we still need to get right, and this is what we've focused on with this [Android P] release. What is the case today—and I think that gets overlooked by a lot of the press on Treble—is that any device that is preloaded with Google'

  • If you want super duper fast updates, you go with the pixel phones, or iPhones. A few Android vendors are "fast" with getting the updates out, but, you have to look at it from the sales & marketing side. It's not in the "best interest" of the manufacturers or carriers to spend the time to test, fix & send out updates, when people "generally" don't keep their phones for more than 2 years. With the prices of phones being in the stratosphere, maybe people will start keeping them longer. Just look after
  • My Nokia 8 gets updates at about the same time as Pixels do (Within a week)

    • It took Nokia a long time to release Pie for the Nokia 8 Sirroco. Even when it was released nothing appeared OTA in my region and I had to download the update from a third party site.

      And this is an Android One branded device.

  • Wouldn't it be much more intuitive to name the different versions of Android by number instead of sweet-du-jour in the summary? How many people not in the business know by heart the order in which these randomly-assigned names came out?

    I understand that the writing makes it obvious in which order they were rolled out, but were they all major versions? Subversions? Are subversions even named?

    (Mind you, the full article does have version numbers next to the names)

    • And just as I clicked on submit and went back to the full article, it dawned on me that the names are in alphabetical order, so ignore me; I'm just a bit more ignorant than I thought.

  • What all these efforts in making it easier to upgrade phones to the latest version are about it shifting the focus from Google to the manufactures.
    Google has it made so easy to upgrade your phone to the latest version that it now is absolutely clear for consumers to find out who the good players are and which the bad ones are. There are no excuses anymore.

  • I am not a big Android fan or even a fan of the cell-phone market, but I am a Android phone owner. As an owner of a phone, I hate when the company that is supposed to stand behind it--doesn't. We don't need to have so many stupid me-too modifications that they can't be updated. Having only one world, we can't afford to think of cellphones as being disposable.

  • This perfectly fits the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

    Project Treble was a long time coming, and could be argued that Google should have baked this into Android since v1.

    That being said, it's here now and one would think that it should make a huge difference, but all this is really doing is putting a spotlight onto how little manufacturers care about support after their product has been purchased.

    What frustrates me the most is that Google has so much sway over the ecos

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