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Comment by robterrell | Hacker News Reader

Great. I guess I can stop hitting the "Update" thing every day in the hope that 4.0 will appear.

I can't help but note that the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch purchased the same month are already running iOS 5.0 and I haven't noticed any speed issues.

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Google updates many parts of "Android" such as Mail, Maps, Youtube, Market etc. independently of the OS. Other parts are improved not on the phone, but server side (e.g. google home page, mobile web interfaces, audio transcription). The bits that it doesn't upgrade (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions of AOSP.

I was pleasantly surprised how many upgrades my phone (which the vendor never took past 2.1) continually got from Google. I managed to get most of the other features from later AOSP releases, without rooting or anything harder than browsing the market.

In the end I added a custom froyo rom to get the benefit of the JIT (since the device had enough RAM to benefit from it) and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon.

All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model. It's as baffling as the people who care that their browser's version number is changing too fast, except in reverse. It's a mostly meaningless number.

You can start complaing the first day Google switches the new version of Youtube or Maps to supporting 4.0 or above and you actually miss out on features. Most of the stuff they are putting in the OS is hardware-related like dual-core support, NFC beam or soft-keys to replace missing buttons. Even the new font is designed for high-DPI screens.

"The... (launcher, browser etc.) can often be replaced by 3rd parties, including repackagings of parts of later versions..."

"I managed to get most of the other features..."

"I added a custom froyo rom... and will probably jump to CyanogenMod soon."

Punchline: "All in all, in not sure why people are so keen for Google to follow such an archaic and monolithic release model."

My whole point (which you've carefully elided in your response) was that you didn't need to do any of that to get the new Market, Maps, Youtube etc. on their own update schedules. Most would consider these key features and selling points of the OS and as such Apple bundles them together with OS updates and corresponding yearly(-ish) hardware releases.

Even the stuff that you have to seek out, like installing a new launcher or keyboard from the market is hardly at the level of recompiling a kernel and wouldn't even be necessary if you've already chosen a 3rd party replacement such as Swype for typing, again updated on its own schedule via the Market.

I could and did do the rest (rooting, seeking out and installing custom Roms) because I enjoy fiddling with things. I don't think a JIT is the kind of thing an average person cares about, or can make decisions about its hardware requirements. I don't recommend, or see much reason, for anyone else to do it if they are not also geeks. Your phone will not disappear in a puff of smoke, on the contrary it will still silently get better without any action on your part even if the version number on the about screen doesn't tick up.

But the facilities that lets me do all that customisation are the same thing that lets anyone use Opera or Firefox as their main browser, set to open URLs by other apps, unlike in iOS where Safari will always be the default browser. Or to change the launcher, use a different dialer or theme my phone differently. These are all good things, even if you don't use them. And there is no need to if you don't wish to.

My girlfriend is capable of clicking "yes" when iTunes ask her if she wants to update her phone, but that's about the extent of it. She's not going to go out and find third-party repackages of updated features, and she can't download custom ROMs or anything like that.

Yet, she likes new features and improvements just as much as anyone else. She might not know what a JIT is, but she'd sure notice if her web browsing got more snappy. Apple's update scheme allows everyone to enjoy new features. Google's leaves non-technical with a lesser experience.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about this, apart from the fact that people seem to want to comment on Android based on third-hand talking points rather than their own experience.

Your girlfriend, if she had bought the same phone as me, from the same vendor, would still be on Android 2.1 but without her having to do anything (apart from possibly agree to some updates when prompted on the phone) she would have the latest versions of apps such Google Maps (only requires Android 1.6 and up) which was better than iOS Maps when the phone was sold, and is still better than iOS Maps in the very latest iOS 5. It has many new features like offline maps, Google location integration, 3D vector maps etc. and she can look forward to more being added.

Meanwhile, if she'd bought a 3G (which has near identical hardware) she'd have had to plug her iPhone into a computer, updated iTunes, and then updated the iPhone to get iOS 3 after a year. She'd have had to do this again to get iOS 4, which would have nearly bricked her phone due to it's lack of speed (despite not actually providing many of the actual features of iOS 4). She could then partially fix this by updating iTunes and the iPhone again after a few point updates were released and then would no longer receive any updates to anything Apple considers part of the OS.

Both systems have ups and downs (e.g. I'm surprised that the Android browser isn't something that's updated independently as you'd think that would fit Google's goals very well, but I assume there's technical issues I don't understand). A fixation on the version number of the OS, or false stereotypes about Android and iOS, obscures all of this.

Finally, the point about the JIT (which I realise I wasn't clear about) is that it only provides benefit if the phone has sufficient RAM. Random people on Android forums would naturally assume newer=better and be disappointed that they didn't have the new shiny, but my phone was somewhat unique in having a large amount of RAM (relative to the rest of the hardware specs anyway). It's therefore a good example of people feeling like they're missing out on something, that would actually hurt their performance if they got it.

My 3GS is almost unusably slow on iOS5.

Mine too. I'm upgrading to the 4S because of this. Can't wait for the 5. I also have a Nexus One for development. I find it hard to believe it was $600 in Jan 2010 and now it's obsolete.

I wouldn't consider the Nexus One obsolete. The whole point of the N1 is that it has an unlocked bootloader, so you don't need Google's blessing to run custom roms or newer versions on your hardware.

There are already ongoing efforts to port the 4.0 SDK images to run on the Nexus One and the Nexus S, and I guarantee there will be even better options once the source code is released.

Use the freedom you paid $600 for to run ICS on your phone anyways.

Exactly. The G1 was technically EOL'd at Android 1.6, but a coworker been running 2.2 on his for well over a year now using a custom ROM.

Mine works just fine, but sometimes hardware issues will cause the slowness. I'm guessing some of the flash memory may be bad.

Check your logs/system diagnostic, if there's nothing strange try a complete reinstall (without restoring from a backup), this is abnormal, most reports are that the 3GS is as fast under iOS5 than it was under iOS4, if not faster.

You're full of it. iOS 5 runs fine on the 3GS.

I've only upgraded one of the 3GS's to iOS 5, and my experiences pretty much match this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4956/apple-ios-5-review/15

Basically, as fast or faster than 4.3. But mine is a development-only device with no music or other content, so maybe that's the difference.

This is interesting. I don't know if it's something with my phone specifically, but the whole thing just lags by a couple of seconds whenever I try to type something. It's so bad that I'm usually done typing a couple of words by the time the first characters come up on the screen ..

If you can, take it in to an Apple Store. It really sounds like you have something going wrong in hardware. Like vondur said, it sounds like bad flash memory.

I remembered when this happened to be when iOS 4 came out and I still had a 3G, a complete wipe/restore solved the problem for me that time, perhaps that will work here, YMMV.

And released a half year earlier than the Nexus One, no less.

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