Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda
that's because the vast majority of Android users have older devices or budget phones. all the flagship phones from the last couple of generations have been updated to ICS and will be getting updates to Jelly Bean. it's not fair to compare the Android update cycle to Apple since Apple only has a handful of devices to support, and they're all flagship devices
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I think the point is that the developer -> manufacturer -> carrier -> consumer model for update distribution has a long-proven history of being incredibly broken. Not just in delivery to the end user, but in feature-control and multiple levels of bloat.
That's not a knock against Android specifically. All non-iOS devices suffer from that model right now, except for BlackBerry. They used to be like that, which totally baffled the hell out of me. RIM is both the developer and the manufacturer, yet they still used to succumb to the carriers when it came to adding in crap from them and relying on them to distribute their updates.
I think I read (or heard?) something about Google starting to look into making their own devices though. Truth-be-told, I really hope that's accurate. The more companies that switch to the developer -> consumer model, the better off we'll all be. The less the carriers are involved at any stage in the process, the better.