Android Platform Version Numbers Are Up And Still Not Impressive, Gingerbread Is On 39% Of Devices

October 4, 2011

Android Platform Version Numbers Are Up And Still Not Impressive, Gingerbread Is On 39% Of Devices 3

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The Android Developers site has posted the latest data on devices running a given version of the Android OS, so let's take a look at the last four months shall we? Ending on July 5th of this year Gingerbread was sitting at about 19%. In August, Gingerbread stepped up to about 24% and in September jumped up a bit more to 31%. Today Gingerbread is sitting at roughly 39% and though that's almost a 10% increase from last month this needs to be higher. With Gingerbread out for almost a year now the carriers still are just not getting updates out as they should be, though it continues to get better. With Ice Cream Sandwich and the Nexus Prime right around the corner, that will be your best bet to make sure you'll be on the most current version of Android from the start. It's still a bit scary to think that the phone you buy may not see any Android OS updates for quite some time after a new OS is released. Hit up the break to see how all the versions stack up and don't forget to hit us up in the comments. Do the masses really even care what Android OS version they are on or know which version they have?

[via android]

Harold Williams Author

Harold was born and raised in Whitehall, NY (supposedly the birthplace of the US Navy). His first real smartphone experience belonged to Nokia and Symbian. Following came years of being a happy BlackBerry follower with a brief moment on Windows Mobile. Once a Droid X landed in his hands, he was forever converted to the dark side of the force. Memories of a Star Tac filled his head with happiness and once again joining Motorola in a new revolution. When not playing guitar he's following the tech world via Twitter and the mobile web trying to fill his need to have and know about the latest and greatest tech. Being grateful for all the free tools Google has provided, he is now sold on Google for life. In the real world he is filling his dorky needs as a project manager for a medical technology company.

3 comments

Gizmodo says:

October 5, 2011 at 7:24 AM

The main problem with Gingerbread is the battery drain bug. Thousands of people made the upgrade and they were shocked by how much the battery live was sometimes shorter on Gingerbread compared to Froyo. The drain started all of a sudden, with no apparent cause.
I spent weeks searching the forums for a solution to get rid of this bug or to find the piece of software (OS or application) guilty for this battery drain, but with no use.
The only solution was to get back to Froyo (2.2.2), since I had a Nandroid Backup of my system.

Reply
Curt says:

October 5, 2011 at 5:25 AM

The real reason why Gingerbread doesn’t have higher adoption numbers is that the phone manufacturers need to rework their ‘skin’ to make sure it works. It is really sad to see none of the phone manufacturers offer a vanilla Android OS on any of their phones.

If the phone manufacturers would get their heads out of their asses, and make their skins available but not required, they could offer Android OS updates sooner. Let the user decide if they want blur or sense or let them decide on other developers skins.

The phone manufacturers are good at making phones, not programming skins. Leave the skins to the experts (developers) and concentrate on making great phones with Android.

Reply
Dave says:

October 4, 2011 at 9:01 PM

my tbolt had been on gingerbread since April, thanks CM7 :^)

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