To fix Android updates, hit OEMs where it hurts | Hacker News Reader

To fix Android updates, hit OEMs where it hurts

arstechnica.com

54 pointsshawndumas52 comments

So I was a founding employee at OnePlus, I've since left but I've seen both how Cyanogen worked and the efforts that went into building the Android team at OnePlus after the relationship with Cyanogen soured. And really, it seems the author is a bit naive about how many Android OEMs actually work.

Though I don't know about any revenue sharing, assuming it's there and that Google would take it away, would it incentivise faster updates? Definitely. Would it actually produce faster updates? Very much doubt it.

At least for OnePlus it wasn't a lack of willingness, prioritisation, or ability. Both the Cyanogen team and the Paranoid Android team, which got hired later on, are highly skilled and have a lot of experience.

Most of the time was spent integrating drivers from external providers such as Qualcomm and JDI. A lot of the time we were simply waiting for working drivers for the hardware we were using and other times we were waiting on bug fixes.

For the biggest OEMs such as Samsung this might actually help them prioritise as they have a more customised OS and as such might spend more time there. Though I'd wager a guess that the reason they cannot move faster is also due to waiting on 3rd party companies not affected by this ad-sharing penalty and that they have a hard time hiring qualified people who know the android system well enough to move things faster.

Why does the Nexus line not have these driver issues?

nVidia are also keeping up with their Shield hardware.

nVidia are using their own hardware so therefore they write their own drivers. Most OEMs outsource to Qualcomm or MediaTek.

Cannot give a completely satisfying answer because I don't know. But running basically stock android and being Google helps a lot. One thing I forgot to mention but which usually adds a couple of weeks extra is the certification process you have to go through. Assuming Google can speed that up a bit for itself.

Google, at least in the past, wrote their own drivers when they had to. Most OEMs do not.

Of course it does. (Read last comment) https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113

Sure, but the question is whether dealing with more driver bugs is the price Nexus users are paying for faster updates. That's hard to conclude from one specific case.

It does as well.

IIRC the Galaxy Nexus for example was abandoned because TI left the mobile business and could not provide new drivers.

Samsung makes a lot of the parts in their phones. They probably do a lot less waiting on 3rd party companies.

Samsung has by far and away sold the most and done the worst job. Their UI changes suck battery and performance from every single app.

I purchased a note 4 because I had a decent experience with the note 2 but after waiting almost an entire year for lollipop I was dissipointed that they didn't rip out TouchWiz and ship a vanilla android ROM with apps. I'd give Kindle Fires and the Fire Phone the same criticism.

The only thing currently keeping me on the standard ROM is the Samsung Camera app which is second to none. Unless someone can correct me and earn internet karma.

The point is deep within the article and it's this:

We've heard reports that Google shares ad revenue with its partners—if a customer buys a Verizon Samsung phone, performs a Google search, and clicks on an ad, Verizon and Samsung get a portion of that ad revenue. So, penalize partners by reducing or eliminating that revenue sharing if they don't push out updates. If an OEM exceeds the curve and stays up to date, increase the amount of revenue sharing.

And that friends is why I went back to iOS. Once again I tried android and discovered that it was about two versions or more behind on the device I purchased.

Don't know why you were downvoted. The fact that this topic still exists is a disgrace for Google (and Android users).

The problem is partially on the customer side (and I am part of it): typically new Android is available first (or at all) on newest aka most expensive devices. I don't necessarily need the most expensive device on market and I accept being a bit behind (which usually has an added value of not being a beta tester with a bunch of stupid regressions thrown at you). So I typically buy a one-Android-behind device, with great hardware for half price essentially.

I blame customers too, but for a different reason. I only reward manufacturers for devices that are well-represented on Cyanogenmod. Granted, someone like my mom has no hope of installing Cyanogenmod on her own, given that she knows nothing of Google or Android. But as long as people have friends or family to help them out with technical matters, they only have themselves to blame for devices whose software quickly go stale.

> But as long as people have friends or family to help them out with technical matters, they only have themselves to blame for devices whose software quickly go stale.

That part makes no sense to me. People who don't have the technical skill to deal with upgrading are typically the people least interested in upgrading.

No, they are not interested enough to care about version upgrades, but they do want to keep running the latest apps and games. This was a real problem until Kitkat came along. These days, app developers seem to be aiming for a minimum of Kitkat, so users who don't upgrade don't suffer as much.

They also should be interested in case of security updates. If Apples update numbers are true, they somehow manage to get the majority of their users to update to the latest version and this is something Android should aim for too.

Cyanogen went stale on me. If I tried to update, it would not boot. Nexus for the win.

We'll see what happens as the sale to Lenovo takes hold, but Motorola has continued to ship pretty decent lower end devices, with pretty rapid updates.

Not the very bottom of the market devices, but they are pretty good for the $200 price point.

Regardless of who's to blame and all that meta conversation, Motorola has not been doing great with the updates these days. The original Moto G was updated to 5.0 something like 9 months after the launch of 5.0. Moto E (2015) was updated from 5.0 to 5.1 and then abandoned. Turbo II got 6.0 a month or two ago.

There are almost certainly worse OEMs who never update anything, or update 2 years late, but I would not describe Moto as rapid on updates.

I have 6.0 on my 2015 Moto G. Since December.

It's nothing to do with Android - it has to do with the device you picked up.

I'm typing this on a Nexus 6p and I'm rocking beta of Android N. I think if you go with a Nexus (or a Xperia IMHO), you will always be using the latest and greatest version of Android.

Worth mentioning that the Sony SW3 was by far the last Android Wear device to finally get the Marshmallow upgrade, so all isn't great on that front either.

You seem to be blaming the customer for not understanding the politics of the Android software update fiasco.

That is very much Android's problem.

Which would be awesome, except that the last Nexus device I got has "the unrecoverable flicker" and they stopped selling the Nexus tablet. I have a phone, I wanted a 7" tablet for those times when I wanted to shut off the phone and play a game or read or watch a movie.

I liked the Nvidia Shield, but they pulled that from the market. I settled for Galaxy Tab 4, but so far, IMO, it's total shite. That's the second time Samsung has suckered me into buying something that sounds good, but didn't work out.

Not to mention which, Samsung has had something like 6 months to update from 4 to 5 and still have failed to do it.

The phones have always been the best phones you could buy for the price. The camera on the Nexus 6p and the 5x are still up there with the latest flagships.

Android has never had a good tablet story...but on the phones, you should definitely try a Nexus

And the fact that Android is way more popular than iOs shows that most people simply don't know or care what version of Android they have because it makes almost no difference to how the apps they use work. If you care then you should have spent a few minutes research and bought a Nexus or a device from a manufacturer who is more prompt with updates.

The fact Android is way more popular than iOS can be used to support any conjecture about user preferences.

The ASP of Android devices is far lower than that of iOS devices.

Android is popular because it appeals to price sensitive consumers who are by far the majority. IOS sells mostly to people who are not primarily price sensitive.

That's it.

I don't know what ASP is and attempts to explain away how Android is far more popular than iOs are neither interesting nor relevant to this discussion (how did Apple get a massive head start if most consumers are price concious?); the fact is, if people were upset about Android updates it would result in people not using Android (which is manifestly not the case) and it would be addressed by Google (which it is not doing).

If the people are upset with their Ford, they'll buy BMW! Nope, doesn't make any sense!

No, but it you change BMW to another make of car that doesn't have the same level of stigma it makes perfect sense.

How about Mercedes, or Porsche?

ASP is Average Selling Price. If you don't know what it is, how can you know whether it is relevant or not?

Apple got a massive head start because there were plenty of non price sensitive consumers to sell to.

Android overtook iOS because there are many more people who can't afford Apple's prices.

It doesn't matter whether people care about the shortcomings of Android, such as the update problems. If they can't afford Apple's higher prices, they will by Android instead.

So you're saying it's the fault of consumers if they get phones that won't receive updates?

No, it's the fault of the manufacturers (and indirectly google, who take take any number of actions to coerce manufacturers to provide updates either more speedily or at all).

It's the user's problem, but for the majority of them it's not a problem. At all.

But for the handful who DO want the updates then yes, it's on them to pick wisely before spending hundreds of pounds on a phone given what we know about the Android ecosystem.

I agree, it's is not a problem that impacts users immediately, otherwise those phones wouldn't sell. The problem is security: an OS that does not receive patches is an insecure OS. That affects users in the long run, and it's more consequences that not being able to run the latest apps.

Sure. There's only one manufacturer who stays on top of updates the way Apple does with iOS - Google (or whomever they contract).

And this year, the only offering from Google are two phones (neither of which I need) or that tablet (which is larger than I wanted).

I did my research and there was exactly jack and shite all.

So then, I settled and went with cheap, thinking how bad can this be?

Samsung. Can they do anything right?

Why can't they push updates independently of the carrier?

Because adware subsidies and service lockin are a big part of carrier profit. Those require os level modifications but carriers don't want to maintain them

I recently had a nagware popup telling me that my phone has already downloaded the 1.1 GB update, with only one option when clicked: "Restart and install"; once a day after midnight, it seems, the notification goes from a background notification to a foreground notification, and it's not until I enter this "restart and install" screen and hit the back button that the notification gets a "Later / Install" option to turn it back into a background notification.

I don't know why LG is pulling this Microsoft Windows 10 nonsense on me, but I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to increase their incentive to do so, so I'd be pretty disappointed with any incentives for OEMs based on "actual adoption" rather than "availability of update".

I'm no fan of gratuitous changes that introduce regressions, but with always connected devices it's crucial to have all security patches applied. That said, the solution seems to be to differentiate critical updates and feature updates and also split stuff into modules/packages.

I agree, I don't see why it shouldn't be similar to almost every other linux distro where most critical security updates are in modular packages. Frankly, I actually want the feature upgrade, but I certainly don't want to be tricked into it or told after it's already done that a big binary update blob is has been downloaded to my phone.

Also with a phone it's kinda bad if you want to use it for communication right now and have to take the risk and wait of applying the update.

On Android it tends to default to automatically download updates but you can change this easily if you're in the minority of users who don't want enhancements and security fixes.

Not sure what os your phone is running but most people actually want phone updates as soon as possible. The reason people don't like Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics is that they do things like treat clicking the x to close the window as "yes, I'd love to have Windows 10", and the reason they don't want windows 10 is because of the risk it'll stop stuff from working. In all my experience of Android (and a little iOs) I've never heard of an update break anything.

It might perform poorly though. Recent Android OS versions run poorly on older Nexus devices. (In particular the first gen Nexus 7.) Perhaps you didn't see it because you don't run hardware that old?

The most recent Nexus 10 update I got didn't cause any problems. I think it's Apple upgrades which slow phones down.

No, they treat clicking the x to close the window as "close the window".

I wish OS upgrades were actually upgrades and not often downgrades. For example, KitKat handled SD card as a 1st class storage, allowing to reinstall apps on an SD card; Lollipop deletes an app from SD card, installs it on the main storage and forces you to manually move it to SD card after each update. I now have >100 pending updates as I am no longer willing to waste time on moving all apps to my 200GB SD card. Now Marshmallow has some silly approach obsoleting internal eMMC with an SD card, of course non-negotiably encrypted with the intent that nobody can extract music, video etc. that might be copyrighted.

Next, Windows Phone 8.1 first removed the option to store HERE Maps on an SD card and 10 removed the app completely, which was about the only appeal to buy a WP device for me before HERE Maps were available on iOS & Android (and the new default map app is an annoying adware).

I am one of those aesthetically unhappy people with flat interfaces - all major OSes shove ugly flatness down my throat. This is a major deal for somebody that has 100% perfect color vision and does professional photography - it's simply unbearable to look at phones these days. The only recluse on Android for me was to install Chinese ULauncher, making Android look like OS X Mavericks, but that phones home way too many things. Not even getting started on Windows 10 nagware which forced me to disable updates completely.

Frankly, I hope Jolla survives (are they backed by HMD now?) and allows me to customize every aspect of my phone instead of accepting more and more restrictions "for my own good". Linux Mint + Sailfish could be a dream combo.

Kitkat (aka 4.4), first class storage?! Far from it.

Since maybe 3.1 Google had clamped down on honest to deity SD access, by changing up the permissions so that the card could only be read by non-system apps.

Samsung and other OEMs routinely changed things back to the old behavior until 4.4 shipped, and Google seems to have arm twisted them into no longer doing so.

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