Half of all Android phones now on Eclair

By Phil Nickinson
last updated

It's been a couple of weeks, and that means it's time for an update as to who's running which version of Android. (See the previous breakdown here.) Fifty percent of Android devices are now running Android 2.1 (and if you count all of Eclair -- 2.0, 2.0.1 and 2.1 -- it's 50.4 percent. Android 1.6 is down to 25 percent even, and Android 1.5 is at 24.6 percent.

It would be interesting to see Android 2.2 numbers on that chart, however unofficial they may be. For what it's worth, our server logs for Monday showed 79 percent of our Android-OS visits coming from Android 2.1, and 7.35 percent coming from Android 2.2, with Android 1.5 coming in third at 4.59 percent. [Android Developer Blog]

Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
11 Comments
  • It will be nice to see some unity come to the Android platform. Looks like we are getting there little by little.
  • I hope gingerbread will allow users and not manufacturers to decide who gets an update
  • That won't happen unless vendor specific changes are separated from the vanilla OS. Such as if HTC Sense is split to widgets that aren't integrated to the OS. Even then, the future vanilla OS will need to have some sort of compatibility layer since, in this example, HTC Sense will be written in the old OS version it may not be compatible. Might not be a problem between minor version changes like 2.1 and 2.2. Anything more major may simply break the vendor additions. They may be able to do something like only send out the automatic upgrade if these sort of widgets are compatible. If they aren't compatible, such as a 2.2 to 3.0 update, the phones don't get updated. This also allows the vendors to obsolesce phones after a period and encourage customers to buy newer phones. If they ignore vendors and just send out updates that break everything, they may alienate the vendors or customers. If the customers are unhappy with the phone after updates, they may turn away from the phone manufacturer or Android all together. That would be a bad deal in the end for Google.
  • I'm glad that Android is gaining unity. Now I just hope HTC doesn't take too long on getting Froyo to their devices...
  • Now that's something I wouldn't bet money on...
  • I totally agree. Something nice and solid that allows customers choice for customization without root would be nice too since majority of users don't even have any clue what root is. THe whole idea of sense not being integrated into the operating system but layered on top would be great. For example like Dr incredible stated thru widgets or maybe thru a new sense design. This would give people options to use sense or not. Again allowing for further customization to totally make the phone "you". Let's face reality. People got more excited about the specs of the Evo that they were able to deal with having sense just so they can have the phone. HTC will still sell phones with or without sense in my opinion. Also phones could be upgraded faster too. Either way Google is gonna rock our socks off no matter what they do. Bottom line.
  • Unity is very easy. Just upgrade every every phone that doesn't have 2.2 (or whatever Google want's to unite to) & have enough forethought to build hardware that can run X.X OS. As for manufactures wanting to sell new phones instead of upgrading? That problem is caused by the carriers & their 1 or 2 yr contracts (I just saw a 3 yr contract for the Legend, insane.) take round numbers $100 a month for the service plus $100 for the phone. $1300 /1yr or $2500 /2yr or Insane $3700 / 3yr . How much can the phone cost them?
  • all of 1.5 users are on galaxy i7500 which will never get updated beyond this point. thanks samsung, you're the best and we appreciate your support
  • I hope soon all phones get the same update. I think that's the one thing iphone has over android.
  • Agreed
  • They've also updated the screen sizes and densities graph. Small/ldpi: from 1% to 1.1%
    Normal/mdpi: from 61.3% to 57.8%
    Large/hdpi: from 37.7% to 41% I can't wait to see how that looks in 2 weeks, after the EVO had more time to make an impact to the numbers.