# How out of date are Android devices?

DevFeed: [How out of date are Android devices?](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-out-of-date-are-android-devices-77648.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://danluu.com/android-updates/>)

Published: 2017-11-12T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Danluu](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/danluu.md>)

Topics: [Android Security](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/android-security.md>), [Large Screen](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/large-screen.md>)

Tags: [android](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android.md>), [android-phones](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/android-phones.md>), [apple](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/apple.md>), [google-play](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google-play.md>), [google-play-store](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google-play-store.md>), [releases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/releases.md>)

## AI overview

The article analyzes Android market-share data to show that devices tend to remain out of date longer over time, with slower adoption of recent releases than in earlier years. It discusses limitations in the data, compares update patterns with iOS and Windows XP, and notes the implications for Android developers targeting newer APIs and for device security.

## Source excerpt

It's common knowledge that Android device tend to be more out of date than iOS devices, but what does this actually mean? Let's look at android marketshare data to see how old devices in the wild are. The x axis of the plot below is date, and the y axis is Android marketshare. The share of all devices sums to 100% (with some artifacts because the public data Google provides is low precision). Color indicates age: blue: current (API major version) yellow: 6 months orange: 1 year dark red: 2 years bright red/white: 3 years light grey: 4 years grey: 5 years black: 6 years or more If we look at the graph, we see a number of reverse-S shaped contours; between each pair of contours, devices get older as we go from left to right. Each contour corresponds to the release of a new android version and the associated devices running that android version. As time passes, devices on that version get older. When a device is upgraded, they're effectively removed from one contour into a new contour and the color changes to a less outdated color. There are three major ways in which this graph understates the number of outdated devices: First, we're using API version data for this and don't have access to the marketshare of point releases and minor updates, so we assume that all devices on the same API version are up to date until the moment a new API version is released, but many (and perhaps most) devices won't receive updates within an API version. Second, this graph shows marketshare, but the number of Android devices has dramatically increased over time. For example, if we look at the 80%-ile most outdated devices (i.e., draw a line 20% up from the bottom), it the 80%-ile device today is a few months more outdated than it was in 2014. The huge growth of Android means that there are many many more outdated devices now than there were in 2014. Third, this data comes from scraping Google Play Store marketshare info. That data shows marketshare of devices that have visited in the Pla