New Iphone --- Apple or Other?

pulsar wrote:
Although Google is trying, they still have been unable to overcome what I think is the biggest flaw - One can never know when or if their current device will be able to run the next version of the operating system.

Version 5.0 (Lollipop) was released Nov. 12, 2014. More than 74% of all Android devices run operating systems older than Lollipop; running versions that do not receive security updates. The current version is 6.0 (Marshmallow), which was released Oct. 5, 2015. 0.3% of Android devices run Marshmallow.

By contrast, the latest version of iOS, version 9 was released Sept 16, 2015. 67% of all iOS devices are already running version 9 and only 9% of all devices run a version older than IOS 8.

Tom

This will always be the case for Google since they ceded control to the carriers from the very beginning. They can't unring that bell now. While they've tried things to alleviate it (decoupling some apps from the OS, putting functionality into Play Services which they control entirely, etc.) they will always be at the carriers' mercy as far as when or if OS upgrade happen. The exception are the Nexus devices, but they represent a vanishingly small percentage of the market.

There is something to be said for owning the entire ecosystem.