One of the biggest complaints in the Android community, other than battery life, is the wait for official updates from their manufacturer or carrier. Just look at how many devices official have Android 4.1. Other than the CDMA Galaxy Nexus’ there’s the Galaxy S3, HTC One X (in most places), and that’s about it. And Android 4.1 hit AOSP in July. That’s about 5 months now, and still only available on a handful of devices. Heck some devices are still waiting on Ice Cream Sandwich, like the HTC Thunderbolt. So which manufacturer is the fastest?
The manufacturer with the slowest updates? None other than LG. It took LG an average of 11.8 months to push an update. Followed by Motorola at 8.6 months and leaving many devices without an update including the Droid 3, Atrix 4G and Photon 4G. Samsung came in second with an average 8.6 months, before they were able to push Android 4.1 to their Galaxy S3 in 4.5 months, now their average is 6.9 months. And at the top is HTC? Yes the struggling manufacturer has an average of 4.8 months to push out an update. Of course they probably got some big help from the HTC G1/Dream and the Nexus One.
Now onto the carriers. Who’s the fastest? We all know it’s not Verizon. The fastest is T-Mobile with an average of 5.8 months and Sprint coming in second at 6.5 months. Third of course is AT&T at 7.8 months. And in last, with no surprise, is Verizon at 8 months. Although I think the average is a bit higher for Verizon.
Not to many surprises there. Although I’d say the biggest surprise is that HTC has the quickest updates. I’m sure owners of the HTC One X and One S would beg to differ. But by now you should know that if you want timely updates, you’ll want to grab a Nexus devices. Since those devices get updates within days of code being pushed to AOSP, unless of course you have a CDMA Nexus. So what are your thoughts on this data? Share them in the comments below.
Source: ArsTechnica