Two-speed Android update risk: Mobes face months-long wait Motorola pushes out Android updates faster than any other manufacturer bar Google Nexus manufacturers, according to a new study. Mobile app metrics firm Apteligent examined device data for Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC, Motorola, and ZTE to determine which manufacturer pushes out OS updates the soonest. It compared the time it took …
And this ^ plus price, is why my house only uses 5x's. When they are done it will be on to the next bottom barrel Nexus. Purchased the last 3 combined for not even $100 more than an fruit phone. Supported device, get the quick update. Not supported, trash and buy supported devices.
Nexus devices were excluded from the study since they always receive the latest Android updates on the day they are released.
Not that that's necessarily fast enough, as any of my fellow Nexus 5 users that were affected by the recent volume fiasco will testify. Still, I suppose that bug only made the phone practically useless, it wasn't a security issue, so who cares, a month is fast enough to fix it, right?
How about factoring in that manufactures choose not to support certain phones.
Motorola do not look that good when you have a 1st gen Moto G and no chance of it getting security fixes never mind upgraded past lollipop.
With many manufacturers, if you have the "latest & greatest" phone then updates occur at reasonable pace but extremely shoddy if you have a device a while (or purchased a phone a while after it came out to get a better deal).
Would be good if there was legal requirement to provide updates for a decent amount of time (and a grudging year or so is not sufficient, we are not all on "keep up with my mates" consumer frenzy of frequent upgrade cycles, some of us keep using a phone until it dies / no longer fit for purpose) - especially when not even pushing out security fixes, never mind upgrade to next OS.
The added problem is determining whether the fault lay with Moto, or with the wireless company.
Even getting our wireless provider to actually say what phones are on track for updates, and which are abandoned, is nigh impossible.
What consumers need and deserve is to be told "this device will be updated until this date."
Perhaps I just don't understand graphs, but whilst Motorola did start pushing out the update before anyone else it appears that it was actually HTC that had the fastest uptake?
If we take the points directly above each month for the period between January and June Motorola captured a total of 0.885% of network traffic while HTC managed 1.176% overall.
Its hardly surprising that Motorola was the first out of the gate as they are known for having an almost vanilla Android implementation but once HTC got their version sorted their uptake was the arguably the fastest.
I see little to crow about Motorola pushing out a limited run of the upgrade to 10/20% of their users and leaving the rest exposed for 4 months while HTC wait a month, to get their version sorted, and then seeing a steady uptake (which, once released is no longer in the hands of the device manufacturer anyway but highly dependent upon the device owners settings and inclination to update).
TL;DR: That graph is almost meaningless
This study is completely meaningless now. Motorola recently announced that updates are just too gosh-darned hard, so they have given up on monthly security patches. Henceforth, Moto will deliver security and OS updates if and when they feel like it.
So, as always, it's 'Nexus or nothing' for Android users who care about security.
http://www.androidauthority.com/no-monthly-security-updates-moto-z-705992/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-that-it-will-not-commit-to-monthly-security-patches/
is that Google screwed the pooch when they allowed carriers and manufacturers to get involved in the OS delivery process.
That put the cost of delivering updates on the carriers and manufacturers, who have a strong financial disincentive for doing so. Hmmm...spend money on updating already-sold phones, with no resulting revenue? Or sell you a new device? Wait, don't tell me....
About that plateau on the Moto graph: Lenovo has halted updates. As of right now, the X Pure is Android 6.0.0 with the February 2016 security patch. The May 2016 security patch is partially deployed and the 6.0.1 update seems to have been abandoned after a limited release. VoLTE isn't entirely working and there are no plans for a fix.
Somebody has to ensure the bloat still functions.
What I'd like to see is a graph that say considers all phones that manufacturer made in the last 4 years.
Getting the update out onto their latest handset - they're still trying to sell this flagship and having the latest OS on it is in their interest.
What used to grate with me was the delay in getting it out to the model that was a year older - and actually impacts more of their users.
Security updates aren't tied to OS updates. Google issue security patches each month for android back to 4.4 (KitKat). Many phone vendors security patch the older os versions, rather than taking on the huge task of full version updates for older phones.
If these security researchers didn't understand this, why should we trust anything else they have to say?
Separate the hardware from the operating system. Mandate a single hardware platform which can be scaled and extended into the numbers of devices we have now, just like on the PC, and let people install any firmware they want.
Just like on the PC they would then take the hardware vendor out of the loop for operating system updates. It would also allow people to install other operating systems on their devices to gain special features or simply more security.
And then you have essentially Windows, with it's malware problem that 100m times worse than Android.
Ask yourself, when was the last time you actually saw an Android malware issue, rather than just reading about the theoretical antivirus scare stories???? Never is the likely answer.
Then there is Windows, where it's rare to fine one that doesn't have an issue with malware....
It's my understanding you have 2 points of failure in this issue: the handset manufacturers and the wireless carriers. Example: even if Samsung releases something for your phone, you're still beholden to Verizon Wireless to release their version of that patch.
Google sold their soul in order to try to catch and dampen Apple's momentum in the market, and now that eagerness is stifling the ability to secure an Android.
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