Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Who is likely to update your Android phone more often? AOSMark aims to find out

Mark Jansen
By
android 9 pie
Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Despite Google’s best efforts, achieving prompt updates across the Android range continues to be a tough nut to crack. Due to the fractured nature of Android, major OS updates tend to be pushed out by individual phone manufacturers rather than Google — so while Google may have introduced Android 9.0 Pie in August, many manufacturers still haven’t updated eligible phones to Google’s latest operating system.

Waiting for the newest version of Android and all its cool new toys can be frustrating, and we try to keep you abreast of the Android 9.0 Pie update schedule where we can — but some manufacturers are worse than others when it comes to updates. New website AOSMark is ranking manufacturers based on their reliability for Android updates, and it has released its first report of the best 20 Android manufacturers.

Recommended Videos

Google sits atop the list, with a score of 3.5 updates on average for each of its phones. Since the Pixel (and previous Nexus) range are always the first to receive the latest version of Google-made Android, and tend to be supported for a few major updates, this is no surprise. What is surprising though is that OnePlus comes second on the list with a score of 2.75. OnePlus phones originally ran the Android fork CyanogenOS, so it’s ironic the Chinese company has become such a strong Android advocate in the last few years.

Related

Nokia comes in third at 1.82, thanks in large part to its embrace of the Android One program. Nokia’s phones run almost pure stock Android, so it’s much quicker to send out updates than companies who use a heavily modified Android skin — like Samsung or LG. Sony runs a similar almost-stock Android, and it’s been rewarded for this with a fourth-place position. Other well-known manufacturers don’t fare as well. Samsung finds itself in eighth position, while Motorola and HTC hit an unenviable eleventh and twelfth. Huawei, Xiaomi, and LG all find themselves in positions of shame with scores lower than 1 — meaning these three companies have not managed an average of a single major update across their released devices.

If those scores seem low to you, it’s worth pointing out how AOSMark formulates its numbers. Essentially, AOSMark awards points for each major update. Security updates and more minor updates don’t count (Android 7.1.0 to Android 7.1.1, for example), but the bigger API changes do — so an upgrade from Android Oreo to Android Pie counts, as does upgrading from Android 8.0 to 8.1.

What’s the point? Well, pressuring manufacturers into prompter upgrades is likely a big part of it, but it’s also about making sure consumers know their future upgrade prospects when they buy a phone. Consumers can expect a manufacturer with a lower score to be less reliable at upgrading a recently released budget phone, while a higher scored manufacturer will be more likely to send out major updates to even its cheapest phones.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Mark Jansen
Mark Jansen
Contributor
Mark Jansen is an avid follower of everything that beeps, bloops, or makes pretty lights. He has a degree in Ancient &…
Google releases 3 more Android apps to help you spend less time on your phone
Google envelope digital wellbeing app

Have you considered throwing your phone in an envelope to cut down on screen time?

At least that’s what Google wants you to do with Envelope, one of the three experimental apps the company is releasing today. The new apps have emerged from the search engine giant’s Experiments With Google division and offer unorthodox solutions to help you spend less time staring at your phone.

Read more
Android’s distraction-killing Focus Mode is now available on Android 10
Android 10 Focus Mode

Focus Mode was conspicuously absent from the launch of Android 10, with only a beta version available for certain phones. Thankfully, that's no longer true, and Android's distraction-cutting Focus Mode is now available on a number of devices running Android 10 and Android 9.0 Pie.

A major new addition to Google's Digital Wellbeing toolkit, Focus Mode seeks to limit the ways your phone can distract you when you're looking to concentrate. Select a number of intrusive or particularly bothersome apps, and Focus Mode will pause those apps while the mode is active, stopping notifications from being sent. Furthermore, while the mode is active, those apps' icons will appear grayed out, and for any of them, you'll be notified that the app is currently locked down if you attempt to open it.

Read more
Android 10 is here, but how many devices did Android 9.0 Pie reach?
android 9 pie app switcher

Android 10 has been released, but as it's still early, only a few devices have been updated to Android's latest version. As such, it will be a while before Google releases numbers about Android 10's penetration into the market. But we can still take a look at how well Android's last major update, Android 9.0 Pie, has been doing. According to numbers from May of 2019, Google is still struggling to update existing devices to its latest operating systems, with the adoption of Pie at a measly 10.4%.

As was true back in October 2018, Android Oreo is still the most common version of Android on devices, with versions 8.0 and 8.1 amounting to a combined 28.3% of all active Android devices. That's a massive 9.1% increase since October 2018. Android Nougat comes in second place, with 7.0 and 7.1 representing 19.2% of all active Android devices. In fact, if placed into a hierarchical list, Android 9.0 Pie comes in at an embarrassing fifth place, behind 2014's Android Lollipop (14.5%) and 2015's Android Marshmallow (16.9%).

Read more