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Comment by edude03 | Hacker News Reader

"Unless Google is going to unveil some new mechanism for updating Android - which would essentially mean taking it out of the hands of the hardware OEMs and carriers"

Arguably this already happened, depending on who you ask. Google moved all? of the high level APIs into the Google Play Services Library, which google can update whenever they want, they can even enable / disable APIs as they see fit (for example, google wallet if it detects you're on a canadian carrier)

Now the only reason to buy a new phone is if you want a new phone, otherwise all your apps will work regardless of what phone / what version of the OS you have.

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> Google moved all? of the high level APIs into the Google Play Services Library

This is not true. And developers need all APIs, not just the ones Google wants to license to OEMs to maintain control of the platform.

For example. Android N will use OpenJDK, and this will be a big shift for us.

Not really good enough. There are massive changes between OS versions. Until a couple days ago, my LG G3 was still on KitKat. The underlying structure, performance, and a lot of other significant details are directly tied to the OS and can only come with an OS update.

And we can't get those because carrier stranglehold, proprietary drivers that need to be compiled for every kernel variant instead of using generic hooks, and so on. Android is still Wild West of smartphones, and it's embarrassing that Google's updates are hilariously terrible compared to Apple.

I don't disagree with you, but I think we've come to expect too much from software updates at the same time. For example, security updates and performance improvements are often touted as the reason we should get software updates more often. However no one expects say apple to replace the processor in your laptop when a new one comes out.

Software costs money to develop, most users don't care enough to pay for software updates (would your "mom" pay $20 to have JDK 8 support?) and unless the update enables a feature the vendor expects you to pay for (say, iCloud or Google Drive) no one is incentivized to provide timely updates.

On the flip side, software updates allow vendors to differentiate their new phones (yeah they both have A123 processors, but this phone has snapMessage *due to the new update)

I think the only other alternative is fully open source phones, which exist, but in terms of updates they're not any better

Most people don't know or care which version of android they have, and it's clear that it's not impacting android's domination of apple in terms of market share.

Google has indeed moved a LOT of things to Play Services.

I should also mention the support library. I can now use some new niceties like vector assets on all Android versions.

However, not everything is part of play services. You can patch some security holes through play services, but some core elements of the platform need a full system update (however Play Services can detect apps trying to exploit a security flaw).

Also, in order to add something like the new permission model or a better version of the runtime, an OS update is still necessary.

Absolutely. My e-mail app, my web browser, my music player, my text messaging app and even my keyboard all update through the App Store. Actual major OS updates are a lot less vital than they once were.

Updating through the App Store isn't the same thing as mainly depending on Google Play services. Those apps still might entirely depend on core OS APIs.

I don't believe I am reading this kind of nonsense in HN. Or you don't know what OS is or I do live in entirely other world than you. Google or any vendor which does produce any OS'es , does spend whole year for optimizing or fixing bug in low level API. How do you feel about stagefright in you KitKat ? Or since this is your ridiculous logic, how about people still running 4.0 (let's imagine all of their "app" updates goes through google play) , what about their low level libraries , which most of the time is unfixable without major update ?

Think about stagefright , your personal data is at risk just because some stupid company doesn't give fuck about you (and me), and wants you buy more phone.

Android update issue is clash between whole hardware and software industry. remember when you buy software you was going to get update for 5year or more most of the time. at the other hand in hardware industry when you did bought (before android) any phone, there was no update. no body cared about updates, and lets be honest the technical capability was not there in that time, so no one excepted companies to update their phone.

But regularly updating their phone require a lot of investment from companies (and at the other hand will a little decrease selling phone). which companies resist, which absoulouttly they don't have right to do. This is fight right now between customers and hardware companies.

Specially from now on this is going to be interesting , because phones from 2015+ , is capable of doing your ordinary computation (reading mails, watching movies, etc) for maybe 7, 8 years. (just like old pc , which does run latest version of Windows 10/Ubuntu good enough right now for you browsing/chatting/watching/etc, but you cant play high end games on it).

How about being a little less hysterical?

> Or you don't know what OS is or I do live in entirely other world than you.

My comparison was (pretty obviously) between iOS, which bundles all of the apps I mentioned with the OS, and Android, which does not. I can only ask for your forgiveness for my "ridiculous logic".

How about being a little less hysterical?

Perhaps the comment could have been worded a little more diplomatically ('cuz we're all sensitive, special flowers here), but I'd say the criticism is spot-on. If one thinks that "oooh, my apps get updated, who cares about OS updates?" (yeah, I know what you actually typed), a little correction is deservedly coming your way. The explanation for your "comparison" still doesn't tell me that you have a good grasp on the point 0xFFC was trying to make.

>cuz we're all sensitive, special flowers here

I think it's more that it's easier to discuss without people being massive jerks.

It's possible to express opinions without going all over the place

There were at least some previously abandoned phones that got fixes for Stagefright. I know the S3 had some releases, although it may differ by carrier.

This isn't true for stuff like the video playback libraries hit by "stagefright". For some reason Google couldn't simply ship a fixed library. I read that it was because the update process doesn't have sufficient rights.

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