Orphan Android: Top Vulnerable Smartphones 2011

Android really is the new Windows Mobile. Completely open application model, easily hackable, able to run on a wide variety of devices (and therefore occasionally seen and sold on devices that are sub-par)[1], poor support given by some vendors, forcing those of us who wish for more to resort to the homebrew community for support.

The biggest accomplishment Apple made with the iPhone is forcing carriers and "manufacturers" (Apple) to conform to a standard. Of all the things Android has over the iPhone, I wish the quality control could be included in that. Microsoft has show us that you can have a quality-controlled phone made by several different manufacturers with different features and still allow for a limited amount of freedom in the Marketplace (with their $9 jailbreak app). WP7 is the middle OS between iOS and Android. Now I'd like to see a middle OS between WP7 and Android. I want Android with quality and standards.

[1](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2010/11/worst-gadget-...)

There is an issue that many phone providers do not provide long term support for their smartphones lineup. But comparing different software projects by how they get updates makes little sense to me.

"6 month is the average lag time of Android phone manufactures after an update has been released."

While I'm sure this is technically correct, the implication that this process is slow, or that other operating systems are supported "faster" is far fetched.

Because Google released the Galaxy Nexus this month, HTC will probably be 6 month "behind" in this statistic. If Google had decided to delay the Galaxy Nexus by 6 month, HTC would be considered "on time". How can HTC's support be in one case be faster or the other slower, if they update the device at the same day in both cases?

So using the release date of the first Nexus Phone as the release date of a new Android version is completly arbitrary. If the same statistic contains data for iOS, I usually see the date that Apple rolls out its new version of iOS to it's devices as the day that the new version is released. But Apple is not only the first manufaturer to roll out iOS on phones, it is also the last one. So why are we using the first manufacturer that releases a phone with a new Android version to determine a release date, and not the last one? Or the 4th one?

Using the release of the sourcecode as a date makes sense. But then, there is nothing comparable to an open source release in iOS or Windows Phone, right?

Then, there is the issue about what comes with a software upgrade. On iOS, core apps like mail or the appstore are considered part of the operating system. They get updates when a new version of the OS is released. On Android however, most of these phones that are still on Android 2.2 get plenty of updates for their Email/Market/Navigation/Voice apps, all the time.

There are also software updates from manufactures which do not include Android version upgrades. Samsung does not need to wait for a new Android version to fix a security hole, or to update one of its own applications.

Finally, it simply makes no sense in comparing how often two different projects get an upgrade. Is Ubuntu so much more advanced than OSX? It gets an update almost every day, and there is a major upgrade every 6 months.

Did the Nexus One only get updated for a year, while the iPhone 3G got updated for 3 years? Or did the Nexus One got it's 3 years worth of updates all in it's first year, because Android development was much faster than iOS development? I think we can all agree that this is completely subjective and highly controversial.

Please note that I don't want to make the case that Android is very well supported by its various software providers. Long term support could be much better for many devices. My point is that these upgrade statistics are sensational and deeply flawed.