Android More Stable than iOS? (Phandroid article)

[AntimonyER]

One factor the article doesn't account for is hardware. iOS is suppose to be able to run on iphones that are several generations back (I think for ios5 the bare minimum is 3GS). And from what I have read the 3gs is barely capable of running io5 and lots of people are complaining about slow downs, crashes and lock ups. So I'm wondering if a good percentage of ios5 crashes in that chart has to do with ios5 running on older hardware such as 3gs or maybe even 4g.

This is another excellent point. I don't think we can make clear comparisons regarding this info as far as app crashes, just too much difference in the environments. Although my friend with the 4S did say iOS 5.0+ has been very unstable compared to 4.0+ when he had is 3GS when I was discussing this article with him.

But you can't deny that for all the talk of android fragmentation, 23 versions vs. 33 versions is an incredible point to combat that line of thought. Its really not that bad.

 

[330D]

A good friend of mine (apple guy to the core (no pun intended)) is on his fifth iPhone. This time they gave him a brand new 4s. All of his previous phones crashed and burned. He is not a power user, he uses it a lot but not for intensive tasks. I try and convert him every time I see him, but alas he thinks like the rest of the world....

 

[EarlyMon]

A couple things to consider/discuss.

One, widgets make Android app utilization less than Apple. I don't need to go into a weather app to see basic weather info, or my calendar, etc. So that is one thing that the apple folks can point out as skewing the numbers slightly, since they need to use apps more often (although they have to admit Android presents info quicker in order to make this argument )

Respectfully, not sure I can agree. Widgets are simply a view into a running app. You can be in an app, working it directly, and get a pop-up in Android saying that an app you might not have realized you were running has crashed and then presented with a dialog to force close or re-open.

Second, multi-tasking is handled differently between Android and iOS. I am not 100% up to date exactly how iOS 4.0+ handles multi-tasking. Would that affect how we should look at these numbers. I am wondering if the app closures per launch is even comparable. If an app crashed once a week, on android, that could theoretically be a 1-1 rate, if the app had been running the entire time. If iOS is psuedo-multitasking, and still closing the app down and restarting when it is called, there would be a lot more launches compared to android.

Android being Linux employs preemptive multitasking (think Windows 7), iOS is cooperative multitasking (think Windows 95).

To my way of thinking, even if what you suggest is true, this doesn't absolve iOS, your logic indicts it further, I think. See my previous post on the Apple mantras not being accurate.

All that matters is, is the chart fair, and I think that was your point.

Seems to me that your ideas for explanations, if true, don't exonerate iOS here.

In for a penny, in for a pound in the ownership experience. From the Forbes article -

However, Android, it should be noted, allows developers to push updates faster than Apple. With Android developers can just send an update to its code, which can show up almost in real-time. But for iOS it can takes days or a week for an update to show up. That means there can be more app crashes while those updates are waiting to happen. Whereas with Android, presumably if developers know there’s a bug they can immediately fix it.

An interesting point indeed.

So regardless if the cause is the iOS architecture or not, the cause is the cause and the customer choice is the customer choice.

With Android, you're probably choosing a lower probability of app crashes and perhaps a higher probability of rapid fixes when they occur.

 

[s.m.knipe]

The point I was trying to make was that the survey ended on 12/15, the 1st day the GNex was available in the US, so the number of users that could potentially report crashes in ICS was potentially very small prior to that (at least in the US). I am going to over exaggerate to make my point here, and I'm not trying to flame.

If there were 1 billion iOS 5 devices in the wild and 0.5% of them had one app error it would still be 5 million app errors reported. If there are 100 Android 4 devices in the wild and 100% reported 10 app errors it would be 1,000 errors. If you put those two statistics in a chart like the one linked below, you could see results like you see between iOS 5 and Android 4.

Yes but the data is normalized so that the total number of apps being launched is not able to skew the results (from Forbes):

But the analysis examined app crashes as a percentage of each app launch, so this data takes out the issue of there being more iOS than Android apps.

The percentages presented would be susceptible to inflation and deflation just based on the sheer amount of reports coming in, and as you point out it would introduce a slight bias for iOS just because of total volume. How they apparently are accounting for this is to create a ratio of launches following a crash to regular launches- we'll call it a "coefficient of failure," and that would make the percentages we are seeing a ratio of a specific coefficient of failure out of all coefficients of failure, not total number of reports. Unless I am missing something about their methodology. In other words, it seems they are taking all data coming in from say iOS 5.0.1, and with each app reporting ((# of launches after a crash) / (# of total launches)) = our coeffecient of failure (across all the volumes using that OS or "normalized"). These ratios are then held as a ratio to themselves (normalized again) yielding the percentages in the chart. That is the only way I can see that they can do this and claim that there will be no volume bias, because percentages derived at the coefficient of failure level would be proportional to the volume of apps used/launched on that OS (as you point out). Which would also mean that the number of cases is normalized, so it does not matter that ICS users had not had a chance to report their crashes. I see your point, but after careful reading the statements made to Forbes I think they have protected against that (or are misleading us about their methodology).

at any rate, I would love to read the actual study just to see how exactly they did normalize their data

EDIT:
I realize that was heavily wordy. They seem to be finding the failure rate within each OS, using some measure of central tendency to describe that OS, then using that MCT value to compare to all others, to find its relative share of the failure. In the process of doing so (specifically at the first or "within the OS" level) they account for over-representation by volume by using that single descriptive statistic.

 

[s.m.knipe]

This is another excellent point. I don't think we can make clear comparisons regarding this info as far as app crashes, just too much difference in the environments. Although my friend with the 4S did say iOS 5.0+ has been very unstable compared to 4.0+ when he had is 3GS when I was discussing this article with him.

That is a valid point they can't really normalize for (I would wager their app reports just show the software environment the launch/crash occurred in).

But you can't deny that for all the talk of android fragmentation, 23 versions vs. 33 versions is an incredible point to combat that line of thought. Its really not that bad.

very true

 

[Bob Maxey]

I wonder about this: "Surprisingly, Crittercism

 

[thebrain]

In my uneducated opinion, this story gets lots of attention because so many web sites using the same information and parroting the Crittercism web site. I just want to know a little more before I pull out my hair ahd toss my crappy iPad and replace it with an android tablet.

About Crittercism:

Crittercism (Crash Reports for iOS and Android Mobile App Developers | Crittercism) is support infrastructure for mobile apps. The company's platform is focused on helping mobile application companies create more engaging and commercially successful applications by providing them the tools and frameworks for debugging and communicating with their users. Crittercism makes good apps great.


The above is taken from thier web site. The organization is lagit, and is gathering and analyzing data in a scientific and unbiased manner. Here is a link warning IOS developers to keep up with the realease of IOS5 iOS releases show a spike in app search crashes - Crittercism Blog

 

[Bob Maxey]

About Crittercism:

Crittercism (Crash Reports for iOS and Android Mobile App Developers | Crittercism) is support infrastructure for mobile apps. The company's platform is focused on helping mobile application companies create more engaging and commercially successful applications by providing them the tools and frameworks for debugging and communicating with their users. Crittercism makes good apps great.


The above is taken from thier web site. The organization is lagit, and is gathering and analyzing data in a scientific and unbiased manner. Here is a link warning IOS developers to keep up with the realease of IOS5 iOS releases show a spike in app search crashes - Crittercism Blog

Let's be very clear on this: I am not saying Crittercism is not legitimate. I simply noticed that the web is filled with endless posts about their recent report. The same darn thing, endlessly repeated.

What I am saying is I need more information before I trust their report outright. Sorry, but the web is filled with data that may or may not be accurate and fair.

 

[argedion]

I wonder about this: "Surprisingly, Crittercism

 

[thebrain]

Let's be very clear on this: I am not saying Crittercism is not legitimate. I simply noticed that the web is filled with endless posts about their recent report. The same darn thing, endlessly repeated.

What I am saying is I need more information before I trust their report outright. Sorry, but the web is filled with data that may or may not be accurate and fair.

I understand your reservations. What you and everyone who reads this particular article needs to understand is that the data was collected and collated to be presented to developer who develop applications for both operating systems. Crittercism is not in business to bash one OS over another, its mission is to help developers improve their applications. The only way you are going to find the extra information to help you make a decision on how much weight you put into the study, is to research it and make your own decision. Once again the data presented in the article was collected and published for application developers, developers who create applications for both operating systems.

With all that said, it is only fair to point out that Google has given Crittercism venture capital, along with AOL and others.

 

[Bob Maxey]

Don't own and iAnything and no real plans to own any of them. However I do have to agree with Bob on this one. Is there more evidence from other sources that support these findings? I known a few people with and IDevice and they love them.

I just Generally hate iApple and MS Winblows. However I will admit to owning Winblows from 95 - 7 I have 7 on my laptop that I am also running Linux on. I stay on the Linux side 99.9% of the time. However I don't want to support biased data or more importantly spread false or biased data.

I always wonder about the stuff I find on the Web. I have long passed the point where I trust any of it. Granted, there must be accurate data on the web, but in some cases, it is hard to find unless you endlessly research links. The article/report we are discussing is repeated endlessly all over the place and the casual observer might conclude iOS is crap and Android is trouble free.

Perhaps it is correct. I need more data before I'll swallow it whole.

One thing I do know about iOS compared to Android is Apple locks it down so tight, virus problems do not exist. Not sure if an un-rooted Android is more susceptible to virus issues or not. I also know Apple/iOS does not always consider the version of iOS and the application. Like I said, iTunes installed incompatible versions of my Pages when I last Synced. Pages started to close unexpectedly. I tried a few things to fix the error and I started seeing incompatible version warnings.

All I worry about is me and all I can go on is my personal experiences. I can't begin to count how many Forced Closes I have with my Android phones. I cannot begin to explain why I occasionally have these issues. I simply accept them as part of the Android experience. And yes it might be due to my own doing.

I can count how many crashes I have had with my iPad. Typically, it is related to Cydia. When you JB, all bets are off. You start using things outside of the App Store and you can have issues. Apple is very good at controlling things, so bad apps are rare. But so are bad or buggy Cydia apps.

When I have a problem it is almost always because I am running an application not designed for my version of iOS. I have seen issues related to not preserving an iPhone's base-band. The person jailbroke his iPhone and suddenly, big piles of problems.

I do not think crashes are generally a part of the Android/iDevice user experience. They happen and until I know the model, the app that crashed, if the user was rooted/jailbroke, the version of Android/iOS, the intelligence level of the user and on and on . . . I''ll fall back on the old adage, #%&@ happens.

 

[EarlyMon]

Never let it be said that the views expressed here are not fair and balanced.

From the Forbes article -

So what does all this data mean? On a basic level, you can see that iOS apps crashed more than Android apps during this time period. But Crittercism’s Levy cautions that this doesn’t necessarily mean that overall iOS apps crash more than Android apps. That’s because Apple had recently released a new version iOS 5 in October. Android’s new Ice Cream Sandwich operating system (Android 4.0), meanwhile, had not been widely released on phones yet at the time of this study. “I expect as Ice Cream Sandwich just launched and the new Nexus S phone launched (during the study), we’ll expect the same situation to occur (with Android) as what happened (with iOS),” Levy says.

That may appear to contradict other statements attributed to Levy, but I personally read that as an honest call to not overuse the data.

That indicated to me a level of professionalism on Levy's part and journalistic integrity on Forbes' part.

I didn't see need of bringing it up earlier, not because I was being tricky, but because there may be a logical fallacy beyond the assumption of how ICS may yet perform.

Remove iOS 5 and ICS from the chart and then see what it says.

It says to me that if the data are normalized properly as claimed, then iOS still has a problem, in that the popular memes and Apple mantras (see my earlier post) are not accurate.

No one here has made fanboy statements, but there does appear to be merit to the study if the claims of sampling and normalization are true - and common sense of the disbelief in a perfect OS certainly allows a bias to trust the study further.

As for comments in the blogosphere, don't get me started. I moderate Phandroid, and even with their relaxed standards, you would not believe the level of embarrassing Android fanboy statements I had to remove.

Anyway, I always encourage swimming upstream to the tech blog sources. The tech blogs form a starting point for news, but I don't think that it's right to use number of sources or comments to vote on reality.

Things are what they are, no more and no less.

 

[EarlyMon]

I applaud everyone's efforts here at approaching this incident with skepticism. Just makes me value my membership here all the more.

I hope no one here reads this thread, especially my comments, as saying that iOS drools.

iOS, by design, does allow for app complexity and performance optimizations for those complex apps that Android simply cannot touch, as of the time of this post, and it's possible that may never change.

But with that righteous reputation has come the popular memes that it is unassailable on many levels, and that is false. The degree is less important than that fact, and it's important to consumers and potential buyers.

Put in the win column for both iOS and Android what they have earned, but put in the draw column that which is equally true.

iOS, like Android, can have force closes and lookups.

iOS, like Android, has security weaknesses. I will maintain that Android may be weaker, but neither is immune.

No need of me to repeat again that the perfect phone doesn’t exist, yes?

 

[rui-no-onna]

One factor the article doesn't account for is hardware. iOS is suppose to be able to run on iphones that are several generations back (I think for ios5 the bare minimum is 3GS). And from what I have read the 3gs is barely capable of running io5 and lots of people are complaining about slow downs, crashes and lock ups. So I'm wondering if a good percentage of ios5 crashes in that chart has to do with ios5 running on older hardware such as 3gs or maybe even 4g.

And a majority of the iOS 4 crashes probably stems from the iPhone 3G and older iPod Touch (I think the 2nd gen still got iOS 4). The hardware just wasn't up for it.

the perfect phone doesn’t exist, yes?

Unfortunately true.