It’s been around seven months since Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) hit shelves but still only one in ten active Android devices have received the update. Admittedly, that’s a bit better than we’ve seen with some previous iterations of Android, but considering that ICS was supposed to be the one Android update to unify them all the numbers are hardly staggering.
Of course, Ice Cream Sandwich was designed to make Android updates easier for manufacturers to adapt to moving forward, so older devices would still have the same trouble upgrading, but therein lies its own problem. With the recent announcement of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, we’ve been left underwhelmed at the number of devices that will receive the Jelly Bean update out of the gate. Forget devices like the Galaxy S 2 that originally shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but have since received updates to ICS. Even handsets that come out of the box with ICS, such as the HTC One X or Galaxy S III are conspicuously absent from the list of devices soon to receive the update.
Not only that, but Google didn’t even announce a new Nexus phone to go along with the new update. Instead, the only devices that will be getting the Jelly Bean update initially are the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Google/Samsung Nexus S and the Motorola Xoom. Basically that’s the last two Android flagship smartphones and an Android tablet that failed to really impress anyone.
Of course the blame can’t be entirely laid upon Google’s shoulders and the update is still yet to even start rolling out on its first few devices, but this is still hardly the vision of the future that Google gave back when it announced Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich last yet.
We hope that the coming months bring news regarding more and more ICS compatible devices getting the 4.1 Jelly Bean update, but we’re still hesitant to believe that anything is going to change too drastically. Android is just too open and diverse a platform to truly unify all of its devices under one iteration of its OS within a year.
There’s also the old issue of both manufacturers and carriers allegedly delaying Android updates in order to sell newer handsets faster. Where a person with a two-year old device might find an update a refreshing enough change to keep their phone another 6 months or more, someone who is increasingly frustrated with an out-dated system is far more likely to ditch the old and buy the new. This is yet another problem that Google is unlikely to be able to deal with in the near future.
Unfortunately in the short-term it looks like Google’s Android fragmentation woes are likely to continue with the current generation of smartphones. Hopefully once ICS is the most-used Android OS on the market we’ll finally start seeing some headway in future updates as manufacturers and carriers should find it easier to update with a certain alacrity that we’ve not yet quite seen.
Find a better phone plan
Thousands of cell phone plans unpacked. All the facts. No surprises.
Related Articles
Find Better Phones and Plans
Hundreds of cell phone plans unpacked. All the facts. No surprises.
