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Comment by akadruid | Hacker News Reader

There's increasingly mainstream coverage of apps which are incompatible with almost every android phone out there - requiring 2.1 or even 2.2 like this does. I wonder how long it will take for manufacturers to take upgrades seriously? Some of them are still abandoning their handsets as soon as they go out the door.

I suspect many of the early adopters are now including this in their purchasing decision when they upgrade.

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Not almost every Android phone.

More than 62% of Android phones are either 2.1 or 2.2.

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...

That's very interesting - 3 months ago it was just 27%, and Eclair has been out over 9 months.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/only-27-3-of-android-phones...

That's a pretty huge jump. Maybe we're seeing an attitude change for manufacturers already? I suppose some of them are now pushing their third generation of android handset and learning lessons from the second.

Just noticed the historical chart at the bottom. It seems that practice of releasing updates is definitely increasing - at the beginning of the year, the average version was actually _decreasing_, as already obsolete 1.5 and 1.6 phones were presumably being sold faster than updates were being released. However, it does look like you're still likely to be left in the cold if you've got something other than a HTC or Motorola (particularly an LG - suckers!) or in some cases even if you live outside the US.

Also, that's a survey of the android market, which will be slightly skewed towards newer handsets (i.e. people who've had their android for a year probably have every app they might use already)

60% is 2.1, however, and both of these new Android features are only supported in 2.2. I have an Eris that went on sale less than a year ago, and chances are my phone will never be updated to 2.2.

My guess is that most phones that are still on 1.5 or 1.6 will never be updated to 2.1 or 2.2

If the phone is 2.1 now, it will probably get 2.2 by the end of the year.

HTC started the rollout of 2.2 for the Desire last week. The Desire is selling well in Europe. I presume they're also rolling it out for the Legend, which was heavily mass-marketed for the last 3-4 months. I have the impression HTC is the main Android vendor in Europe at the moment. Just this rollout will push 2.2 deployment numbers up, I think.

As far as I know this is the first mainstream upgrade of phones from 2.1 to 2.2 (apart from the Nexus which is, imo, niche). Or did I miss any?

Every day I regret buying my mytouch 3g instead of waiting for the nexus one on the same network at the same price.

2.1 users should check out Edwin. It does a lot of this stuff, it's free and its made by a HN reader.

My Verizon Droid just updated to 2.2 yesterday.

Can I ask what city you're in? I've been refreshing System Information like a madman waiting for my 2.2 upgrade to come in.

I'm in Helena, Montana. Though, as of this morning, the other guys in my office with Droids haven't been upgraded either.

You're right... unfortunately most of the mobile device manufacturers out there are still in their mode of creating tons of devices one after another, forgetting about the older ones.

They're all scrambling to compete with Apple, but they're completely missing this. Follow the In-N-Out philosophy... do one thing really well and then keep doing it. So many handsets these days are utter garbage. They're all more or less leapfrogging each other with a few pixels there, a few GHz there, +1 MP on the camera.

Of course the carriers aren't helping. They all just want to sell units. It's a mess.

I'm happy with my Nexus One and T-Mobile for now :)

> They all just want to sell units. It's a mess.

Actually, they want you to buy a 12 or 24-month plan, The unit is just the bait.

In this scenario, it makes sense to build non-upgradable phones so that users opt to get locked in for another year just to get a "free" new phone.

I am very glad, that I can just buy separate SIM cards in Europe.

You can do that with the Nexus One in the US, but people don't. Possibly because the carriers try their damndest to make sure nobody knows about it.

Most of the handsets on the market are gonna get 2.2. Myself, I couldnt wait so I installed 2.2 myself and I'm loving it.

What handset are you using?

HTC Incredible on Verizon.

So I'm definitely one of the people who laughs when people on tech forums yell about the carriers loading phones with bloatware and crippling their functionality. The only thing on my phone that wasnt on other SenseUI devices (even before root) was the Droid boot animation and a Verizon tab in the Android Market. And no functionality was crippled. I could always install non-market apps.

Yep. I have the Samsung Moment that was released last November on Sprint, it got 2.1 but has been officially abandoned. It's my last Samsung phone, failing to maintain the OS is not excusable unless there's a hardware restriction that forces it.

Root it. Or just manually upgrade?

I am rooted. There is no 2.2 release for it.

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