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While looking for historical data for another comment, I found that Wikipedia is still providing a versions used vs time graph[^] for Android (something that Google stopped doing a few years ago when it started to look embarrassing). It shows almost every old version maintaining an almost constant share from when it stops being the second newest until when it gets to be a few years old and fades away as the old phones using it are replaced.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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This was one of the reasons I gave up on Android devices. I bought the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 (pre-iPad mini) and loved it, sorta, until the bugs and instability started getting annoying. A new version of Android comes out and it was months and months of promises that Samsung would update the tabs with the latest, but they never did. The only path to better software was to buy a new device.
This isn't a direct fault of Google. They have an "Open" OS that others can take and use. Unfortunately the fragmentation (and Hell Stew of crudware placed on top of Android) became totally self defeating and this is why they're ensuring total control over Android L for Android TV and Android Wear.
Apple and Microsoft do it better, and have done it better for years. Google need to be pragmatic about their OS and force manufactures to include an upgrade path as a requirement.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: Hell Stew of crudware placed on top of Android)
I know and I was hoping to not experience this with my (original) Google Nexus 7.
I didn't for the first 18 months.
However, lately, there is some piece of the OS or Google-ware which will literally eat the processor and then eat the battery over night.
I use it as an alarm clock. Last night I had about 30% battery, went to sleep and something at the battery and it was dead when my internal alarm clock woke me up.
It is a quadcore and I'm running 4.4.4 (not 5) and there are times I'm waiting for 10-15 seconds for it to respond to me. Why? Why!?! 
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newton.saber wrote: Last night I had about 30% battery, went to sleep and something at the battery and it was dead when my internal alarm clock woke me up.
Interesting. I can usually get 4 days on a full charge. I've gone to bed before when only a single digit was left in the battery, and when I checked it the next morning, it was only down to 2-3 percent.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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Normally mine has been that way too. Lately however, something seems to run for hours at heavy processor usage or something. It's quite terrible.
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newton.saber wrote: Lately however, something seems to run for hours at heavy processor usage or something. It's quite terrible.
Have you looked into the Juice Defender app? It might help narrow the problem down.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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One big ****-up when upgrading to 4.4.x android is that it can misplace the zero for the battery level.
That makes it shut down the machine when there's (I've heard as much as 60-odd% of) power left in the battery, because it thinks there's zero power.
I have this on one of my tablets (any android employees please note that I know how to open a tab and use a multi-meter, so don't try to feed me any bull), which doesn't last a quarter as long as it used to.
It did improve a bit when I kept letting the OS close it down and restarting it without connecting the adapter, to nudge the zero mark lower, but it was a slow process, and I lost the will to live go very far with it.
When I find some more patience, I'll take the back off and drain the battery directly.
Android is ignoring the issue, with only unofficial comments from employees saying that it's all in the users' imagination.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: That makes it shut down the machine when there's (I've heard as much as 60-odd% of) power left in the battery
I think that is exactly what it is. I've had that happen while I was holding the thing a couple of times and the battery left was like 20% or so. That's really annoying.
Okay, so what about retro-grading -- going back to another version 4.1, .2 or something? Is it possible? Is it way too difficult? I'd be up for that, if it made my pad work like it used to.
Thanks
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I didn't try installing an older ROM, because I'd really lost interest in saving it, by then. I just leave it plugged in.
If you can find an older ROM, it might be worth a try -- it can't really make it worse, can it?
I'd have a mooch around http://www.arctablet.com/blog/forum/[^] and http://forum.xda-developers.com/[^], before doing any work, though. There might be some people with the same tab who've dealt with the same problem.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Just found this official link on how to retro-grade my Google Nexus 7.
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images[^]
I guess it is a bit easier if you have an actual Nexus so that's one good thing.
Anyhoo, I'll probably do this over the weekend because it will probably take all my time and I'll probably get extremely frustrated with it all and start yelling and that'll get the blood pumping and that'll be almost like exercise so that'll be good for me who works in an office and rarely moves. 
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Just remember after you've done it that you re-install your apps from the play-store web-site (why is there no "little angel" smiley?)
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I totally second that.
I have an Acer phone which has a few issues, like for examples not allowing Apps to be installed on the SD Card, so the memory is pretty much saturated after the installation of ... four apps. This sucks a little bit - I am mostly phoning and sync'ing calenders with my phone, so not much of a hassle, but still, I am certain this must be a PITA for most users; new version of Android have this issue fixed (switching app locations between internal and SD memory is now natively handled by the OS), but Acer won't upgrade... so this makes the device pretty much useless for a "smartphone" use. (actually, this is so bad that updates cannot be downloaded anymore, so the problem cannot be fixed anyway).
This leaves you with the option of rooting, but I have somehow no confidence in that, and honestly no time to go over ten thousands of forum to find out how not to destroy my phone. As a customer, I should not have to require to hack methods voiding the guarantee to fix os issues on my device...
modified 13-Feb-15 10:48am.
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Rage wrote: so the memory is pretty much saturated after the installation of ... four apps.
Gads! I'm up in the 50-ish neighborhood of installed apps (on the internal card) and have yet to receive any sort of low memory message.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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I have an HTC One (M8), Android version 4.4.4.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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It's not that bad, I'm developing with a min SDK 16, which is 4.1 Jelly Bean and it runs on 90% of the current devices.
We are testing up to Kit Kat and so far we don't have any issues with incompatibilities.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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Dan Neely wrote: fades away as the old phones using it are replaced
Why is that embarrassing?
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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pwasser wrote: Why is that embarrassing?
It's not. It's how the market is working.
People are buying new phones at such an accelerated rate that it's not worth updating the older OS versions for every older device.
Yes, it's annoying that you have to buy a new phone, every year or so, but, on the plus side: You have to buy a new phone, every year or so! YAYY!!!
And there's no point complaining about cr@pware included by vendors, because it's all easily removed (unlike the cr@pware provided by apple, which is so integrated into the OS that you'd have to cripple the OS to remove it).
This is probably just the visible end of a new apple slur campaign. The only way they can compete is by maligning their competition, so their sock puppets keep starting insult chains, which the fanbois happily pass on and/or augment (you'll notice that the main complaints about Android devices in the thread are from apple fans).
The smartphone world is currently very simple:
- apple makes huge profits by vastly overcharging its fanbois for comparatively few devices.
- Win phone is crippled by a terrible app store (not just in comparison to the far better android and apple ones; it's just plain terrible).
- Android pretty much owns the market, with sales an order of magnitude greater than either rival's, and with satisfied customers discussed in billions.
Without their godlike figurehead, apple won't be able to maintain their overcharging-suckers impetus for many years, so will probably end up begging MS for a handout. Again.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Yes I agree. I don't however buy I new phone every year. I have never been able to work out why I should. Jobs was a genius for sure but his message always seemed meant for someone else.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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I was still using a Sony Ericsson "feature phone" years after smartphones came around (interestingly, it -- like many other feature phones -- had back and front cameras, years before apple invented that groundbreaking feature).
When the mic on that crapped out, I bought a Samsung mini 2, which was about the same size.
As an owner of an ipad3, I was absolutely blown away at how useful the Android OS was, compared to ios, and started doing all manner of things with it, which kinda left me with no option but to buy one with a bigger screen and more memory.
I'm back to normal, now, as in I'll wait until this one breaks.
What's cool is that the old one is now used as a remote control for just about everything, and as a numeric keypad for my laptop.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Besides the people drinking iKoolaid and GiantBlockOfCololorKoolaid making fun of the fandroids stuck with obsolete crap you mean?
Security bugs in OS level components like the kernel are unpatched, leading to foreverday bugs in relatively new devices that anyone on the contract treadmill can't replace without shelling out a lot of $$$.
A recent example.[^] 60% of android phones currently in use have foreverday bugs in every app that embeds html5.  You can avoid it when surfing the web directly using Chrome; but if running an app that's a browser control stuffed with HTML5 for easy cross platform development you're pw3d.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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This rises an important question : what the elephant happened in 10/2014 ?
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"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, upgrading your OS." -- Bilbo
Upgrading is to be avoided, especially for an Operating System. Best to junk it or wipe it and start fresh.
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Not necessarily. I've never had an issue upgrading the OS on my iPhone (note: a few people have had issues with some updates, but those were generally fixed within a day or two by Apple). *I am not trolling - just reporting my own experience.*
According to my calculations, I should be able to retire about 5 years after I die.
modified 13-Feb-15 11:07am.
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Nor have I had trouble when my Droid has upgraded itself. I was speaking in a more general sense, including desktop and server systems.
modified 13-Feb-15 11:11am.
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