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Android 10 Had the Fastest Adoption Rate of Any Version of Android Yet (theverge.com) 27

Google announced that Android is seeing the fastest adoption rates of any version of Android. The Verge reports: According to Google, Android 10 was installed on 100 million devices five months after its launch in September 2019 â" 28 percent faster than it took the company to reach a similar milestone for Android Pie. Google credits the faster adoption rate to improvements the company has been making over the years, like Android Oreo's Project Treble and Android 10's Project Mainline, which makes it easier for hardware companies to create new updates.

But while those numbers are impressive, Google's post is notably missing some crucial information, like what percentage of Android devices are running Android 10 -- a number that's sure to be lower than Google would like. In fact, Google has effectively stopped publishing the breakdown percentage of which Android devices are running which version of Android entirely, following a similar announcement last August that looked back at Android 9 Pie adoption rates. (At the time, Android Pie had been installed on 22.6 percent of Android devices ahead of the release of Android 10.)

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Android 10 Had the Fastest Adoption Rate of Any Version of Android Yet

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  • My Moto G7 just updated to Android 10 yesterday. It took like 6 hours. What a joke.
    • by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I would suggest that is on Motorola and its packaging, on my Pixel 2 XL the time required to do the major update wasn't long enough that I recall a distinction between it and the monthly security updates.
    • Just be glad you got an update. I have an X4 and it doesn't appear Motorola is going to do an android 10 update even though it's an Android One phone, and 10 came out within the update period for the device.

    • Maybe it's your cell carrier. My G7 updated in about 5 minutes.

  • by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @08:14PM (#60285062) Homepage
    All cell phones should be able to adopt the latest version of Android. It would have improved Alphabet's (Google's) reputation if that had been a requirement. My opinion.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Why though?

      Okay you get some new features, but does your hardware support them?

      Security updates keep coming for older versions, Google fixed that years ago.

      My wife has an iPhone and doesn't take OS updates until forced to because she hates the phone changing. She just wants security fixes but not Apple randomly changing the UI that she is used to. My mum is like that too. So for some people not getting OS major version bumps is a feature.

    • All cell phones should be able to adopt the latest version of Android. It would have improved Alphabet's (Google's) reputation if that had been a requirement. My opinion.

      This is something that would have been insightful in 2005. Back then Android releases actually introduced earth shattering changes like multi-touch support. Project butter to re-write the underlying UI APIs and make the device run smoother, changes to the lock screen and how bluetooth audio is handled.

      Fast forward to 2020 and I just heard that Android 10 came out last year so I looked up what I'm missing:
      - System level dark mode. Well either a developer supports dark mode or doesn't. I don't care if that ha

    • All cell phones should be able to adopt the latest version of Android. It would have improved Alphabet's (Google's) reputation if that had been a requirement. My opinion.

      It is/was a requirement, and any device launched with Android 8 or later can install Android 10 (and, soon, 11), at least from a technical perspective. This is what the "Project Treble" mentioned in the summary is all about; drawing a hard line between system and vendor components and constraining the system side to talk to the vendor side through a well-defined, strictly-enforced and well-tested set of interfaces.

      Prior to Treble, OEMs were able to make changes to both system and vendor components at will

  • Why might you ask?

    Because upgrading to Android 10, means a new base level of Google Apps.
    The new base level of Google apps, includes an awful, terrible, heinously bad version of Google Maps.

    https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

    I'm sick of this compass missing, they kept it on iOS, it's fantastic for 'mental navigation' so regardless what the map is telling me, I also /know/ that I'm travelling, South East, away from home and /therefore/ regardless of what the GPS navigation tells me, to return home, I'll need to approximately head, North West.

    It sounds like a simple thing, but it was a good addition to maps and I utterly refuse to use maps, without this compass.
    My god is it a time saver in underground carpacks at a new shopping mall you're new to. Traffic is bad. I know I went North to get to this new mall and my damn GPS doesn't know where I am yet, but my compass is telling me, that the exit to the right is South and turning Left is North...... therefore, thanks to this compass, I didn't start heading home, in the wrong direction, which in bad traffic can mean a u-turn or 5 minutes lost.

    I want to know what direction I'm driving in and I want that compass - as does a heap of other people.
    Google pulled it from Google maps over a year ago now and I utterly refuse to update to a version without it.

    • I never noticed any compass on android google map.

      • It's on a particular build - I don't have my phone on me - but if you click the link I posted, you'll see people discussing it.

    • The only time I've ever seen a compass on Google maps is if I manually rotate or move the screen away from north, or while navigating off the current location indicator. I've never seen one on the screen while navigating. My car has a compass though... can't say I've ever used that though.

  • They used to keep the https://developer.android.com/... [android.com] page updated, but have now removed all the API version distributions. They stopped updating in early 2019â"now all gone. Totally questionable.
    • It was completely pointless at this point from a developer perspective. I know it sounds nefarious but ultimately the reason they had those stats was to show the API level that programmers could target to get maximum reach. This was actually relevant back when things changed, but in terms of API functionality for developers in the past 5-6 years Android has introduced pretty much *nothing*.

      Which is also why I don't know which Android version I run. I used to care about that as new versions introduced new fe

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... continue to upgrade the phones they sell you. Still stuck on 8.0.0. I've had this experience with two different carriers: buy the phone and you never get updates. It's a joke.

  • I sometimes find an old phone in a drawer I'm cleaning out. Since many people upgrade every 1-3 years, there are quite a few unused old phones out there. It might be hard to gauge percentages of each version of the OS because it's hard to gauge how many phones with older versions are actually still being used.

  • It is my perception that Android has matured and that shows in the updates that are becoming increasingly incremental and utilitarian, with no more massive changes. It still is Googles "Doubleplusgood Protable Televisor" all-out surveilance economy all around, but the touchscreen systems have matured as good as they can IMHO and Android with it.

    On top of that come Googles efforts to curb the fragmentation that plagues Android.

    That is reflected in the adoption rate more and more. Good for them.

    My 2 cents.

  • As an Android dev, it seems there's been a steady increase since Project Treble. I remain optimistic that one day Android updates will occur as quickly and easily as iOS ones. When even Samsung jumps on board, that says something. Have there been lots of the problems in the PAST, yes, of course. But, I'd rather not LIVE in the past by complaining about it. I'd rather enjoy the continual progress they're making towards everyone getting timely updates. It's especially helpful as a developer when I don't
  • >In fact, Google has effectively stopped publishing the breakdown percentage of which Android devices are running which version of Android entirely

    I've found that Google's Android Stuidio app creator regularly provides an updated summary showing percent of devices running various versions of Android. Android Studio 4.0 was released in May 2020. Just go to create a new project in Android Studio and it shows you this summary:

    Min Android Version Percent of Devices
    4.1 Jelly Bean 99.80%
    4.4 KitKat 98.10%
    5.0

We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan

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