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Comment by stusmall | Hacker News Reader

How so? The quick software updates is a selling point to devs but not so much to consumers. We aren't their target market. It seems like a good place to cut costs since you don't have the huge reaccuring engineering costs and there is much more freedom on part selection

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Google is interested in building Android as a platform. Having 80% of your install base stuck 4 versions behind[1] is a crappy way of doing it. Even after they've moved more and more of the platform into the Play frameworks you're still leaving users without a bunch of improvements to the core platform, not to mention security fixes. iOS is miles ahead on this front exactly because it controls the hardware. That Google doesn't do the same now that it also controls the hardware seems short-sighted.

Building a 150$ great phone would allow them to set a feature/quality floor for the market. If they forced their suppliers so the hardware in these phones is properly supported upstream, targeting new versions of Android should be pretty easy. When Ubuntu launches a new version it doesn't need to go and retrofit it to the thousand different types of laptop out there. The state of Android though is that the GPU/Camera/whatever drivers are binary blobs locked in to a specific kernel version.

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

and they could/should have done this 4 years ago, minus the hardware, simply by tightening the licensing model. you want to say you're "android" and use our software? You have conform to these minimums.

most people could predict from a mile away that when there's no restrictions on it, the carriers and manufacturers will generally race to the bottom in terms of quality and support. ESPECIALLY when the google name is tangentially attached to something, why would they bother making a good hardware model or updating it regularly? laypeople - who they are targeting - will blame google before they blame a handset maker or carrier.

Four years ago Android was well behind iOS, RIM was still around, OEMs were still considering having their own smartphone OSes, and Google had minimal leverage. There's a good chance the OEMs would have refused to go with an Android with a tighter licensing model.

Point in case: I have a Galaxy Nexus that is fewer than two years old that won't receive any future releases because it's old enough they don't want to bother with.... not that it isn't capable... they just don't want to bother updating devices that are older than X (where X = less than the average contract length in the US).

Anecdotal point, but my Mom is much happier to get an update with a new phone than to have an old phone updated.

I kind of wonder if that's because a lot of updates are rolled out poorly to older devices. On my previous two phones, I've ended up running CyanogenMod or another third-party ROM, even at the same base Android version at the stock OTA updates, because many times even the RC versions run better than what's getting pushed by the carrier. Verizon customer here though, so I don't know if other networks are better about that. I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if that effect (wanting a new phone over an update) is intentional.

Part of it is just change. One day, I needed to pull up the map on my Nexus phone -- and it had a completely different interface to it. I had to sit in a parking lot for an extra 15 minutes to get it to do what I wanted.

Now I've got KitKat, and the phone dialer has changed -- I have to hit an extra button to get all my contacts, and I don't like the "premium" spots being automatically populated (there are only 3 large icons, and room for two smaller icons, in the quick-access screen). The most important contact is the one I need right then.

Oh, and I also have to re-agree to the license terms on a number of apps whenever I launch them the first time after an upgrade. And my tethering is no longer working. And the flashlight app that worked fine is now rebooting the phone randomly after it is on for a few seconds. At this point, I'm ready to wipe and re-install the older OS version.

Depending on what flashlight app that is, crashing might actually improve it. http://m.fastcompany.com/3023042/fast-feed/this-popular-flas...

In this case, it was the free/free one from F-droid -- I always go there first for utility-type apps, before hitting one of the app stores. I think this is actually why I was so upset, is I don't want to have to resort to a flashlight app (or any utility for that matter) that may be doing other things behind the scenes.

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