El Reg's Giant Mobile Industry Roundup of 2014

It has been a crowded year in mobile. Apple breathed life into its iPhone brand, Google tried to take control of Android, while Microsoft fell asleep at the wheel. The Chinese handset tide began to reach Europe. Nokia waved goodbye to its phone division and jumped back in with a tablet – and an unusual business proposition. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't agree on Android 5 problems or AndroidWear battery life.

I have Lollipop on my Nexus5 and have no problems whatsoever. The camera performance has taken a massive leap forward (it was already punching above it's £300 pricetag when I bought it 12 months ago).

The "Reports of the Lollipop update being buggy abound" all seem to be related to the 2012 Nexus7, and it seems the OTA 5.02 (which you didn't bother reporting about), fixes lag issue

As usual, always in a hurry to complain, never in a hurry to follow up (or worse still, carry on the FUD).

I also have no issues with Androidwear batter life. I used to easilly get 2.5 days between charges on my SWR50, that's now stretched to 3 days between charges since Android 5.01 arrived on it.

[fishman]

Re: Don't agree on Android 5 problems or AndroidWear battery life.

I've got Lollipop on my Nexus 4 and also have had no problems. And battery life does seem to be better than before.

[Haro]

Android rush to commodity

The Oneplus One became available to all in North America just before Christmas. Mine was delivered Christmas Eve. Although the CyanogenMod saga is completely psycho, they are supporting the phone outside of India. The phone is great, and I would recommend it.

[Buzzword]

Tarred by their own brush

Android is also facing the other Windows fate: being judged by old versions of its own software. Microsoft did itself no favours by continuing to support XP into 2014: likewise, many Android users are stuck with Jelly Bean (or even Gingerbread) with no chance of future upgrades. When these buyers are shopping around for their next phone, they'll remember all the bugs in their current Android version. For all Apple's foibles, they've been incredibly good at supporting the latest OS on older hardware. As phone hardware matures and replacement cycles lengthen, Android's non-upgradeability* will increasingly tarnish its reputation.

(*Yes, tech-savvy Reg readers can install custom/hacked versions of the OS; but try getting your nan to do that.)

[Haro]

Re: Tarred by their own brush

My unscientific poll of a few, shows that Apple doesn't put tremendous effort into supporting old hardware. The local cell phone booth says 'Never upgrade.', and some people find quite a performance hit with the old hardware when they upgrade. Of course, the poll could be wrong. :)

[Daggerchild]

Re: Tarred by their own brush

It's a bit of problem. Google gave the Android update responsibility to others, instead of 'new and innovative' uses, they ended up with streets clogged with neglected orphans. Yet if they pull all the puppetstrings back into their own hands again, the Monopoly warnings go off and the pitchforks come out.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[RankingRoger]

Re: Tarred by their own brush

What is the obsession that some people have with needing the latest android version?

Most real users don't care, google deliver apps and functionality to phones still, and all apps are available, either because the API is very mature and developers don't need to limit to new Android versions, or because Google have a VERY good backwards compatibility library.

So what precisely do these orphans miss out on? Bragging rights of having a higher version number is all I can see..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tarred by their own brush

"When these buyers are shopping around for their next phone, they'll remember all the bugs in their current Android version"

What bugs? Every android release I have ever known has been very solid. So what if you are stuck on jellybean, all the good stuff is deployed using play services these days.

Trying to use apples once a year software refresh in relation to android is pointless, google are constantly updating on a rolling cycle, the underlying phone os version means very little now.

[I am not spartacus]

Optional

"Android is also facing the other Windows fate: being judged by old versions of its own software. Microsoft did itself no favours by continuing to support XP into 2014: likewise, many Android users are stuck with Jelly Bean (or even Gingerbread) with no chance of future upgrades.

Yeah, but to an extent Microsoft did support XP. More-or-less timely (often less) bug fixes and security enhancements. Not seen much sign of Google coming out with security fixes for Gingerbread and them being rolled out to the phones. Not seen much sign of Google making it easy to upgrade a Gingerbread phone to something that is 'supported'.

So, in the Google ecosystem, the user is also damned if they do (to the extent possible) and damned if they don't. While it is also true that a large percentage of Android security problems are due to apps that are over-promiscuous (so you can be under-promiscuous? oh, well) with permissions, this is also a problem, and Google need to fix both problems.

The phone hardware manufacturers quite like this situation, of course. Phones become buggy/malware ridden before their time, and so they sell replacement phones more frequently, but, at some point, this casualness will come back to bite Android sales, and then there will be a real panic to fix it.

@Andrew Orlowski

"Android’s biggest problem in 2015 won’t be Apple, but competition authorities. And strategy, policy and regulatory issues are increasingly defining the landscape. I’ll deal with these in another story.

No, it won't. It'll be the users. At some point, the users will rebel, unless Google fixes the issues first. Right now, it hasn't happened because it is difficult to see where users would go instead.

Apple? Cost. Well, and buying in to being a ***** with an iPhone (other derogatory references are available). Tizen, Firefox? Insufficient apps, range of phones, not much presence in retail outlets. Not an established platform. Windows? Close, but it is still something to do with the hated Microsoft (with whom people will deal when it is a necessity, but here it isn't). But, it wouldn't take all that much for there to be enough of a change that one of the other options starts looking attractive, and then Android could get quite a kicking and quickly.

Let me just say that I like Android in many ways, but you can see the clouds on the horizon, and this stuff will take time to fix, so Google needs to be working on it now (or, if they want to do it properly, six months ago).

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Microsoft FAIL

What's truly important is that Windows Phone is still an also-ran that nobody wants. May it continue to be that way forever.

[Chris Parsons]

Re: Microsoft FAIL

In what way a fail? I have a Nokia 920, makes phone calls, sends texts and email, browser works fine and it has a great camera. The OS is intuitive. I don't see the problem, but I guess I'm just not cool enough.

[Dr Scrum Master]

Sir Ive

I've become accustomed to incorrect use of titles over the years with Americans treating Prime Minister as a title and their peculiar habit of treating Ambassador as a title, but thus far I’d only found Singaporeans misusing “Sir” (although in the Philippines it’s used as a polite honorific for all men).

[Daniel Hall]

Quote

"Either way, the iPhone is easily Apple’s best iPhone"

No shit! lol