Talk:Android version history/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Support Status

There is a column in the table called "Support Status". What does this mean? Are these versions of the OS no longer officially supported? Is the API not supported? Where are the citations/links to official Google sources indicating they are unsupported? -Seinfreak37 (talk) 14:54, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Starting with Android 5.0 Lollipop , monthly security patches are released, which come with new build numbers.
The most recent build for Lollipop is LMY49M, which was released in July 2016 for the Google Nexus 10.
Android Marshmallow and Nougat still receive new builds every month, which means they're still supported.

Evidence of this is on the Google Factory Images page, and the Android Build Numbers page.
When Google stops releasing monthly security updates for Android Marshmallow, then it will be unsupported.
Calvin Hogg (talk) 10:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I am looking at a 5.1.1

• Kernel version 3.10.65-10429622 Jan 18 2017

Android Security Patch level

• 1 January 2017

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC).

The support status column is misleading. The support from Google is only for specific hardware devices, not for the AOSP version. Also the support reference link is of poor quality. The link below is more clear about the Google support ending dates.

• https://support.google.com/android-one/answer/4457705 - When you'll get Android software updates - No guaranteed Android version updates after

Gohopper (talk) 16:23, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Pie chart colors

Whoever you are, are you color blind!? You could not have picked worse colors even if you tried to do it deliberately. :( Please change the top 4 colors (and all colors in fact) to more discriminating ones, this is ridiculous. Naki (talk) 14:32, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

For some reason an editor has uploaded this pie charge as an image, so it's difficult for anyone else to update it. I'd speculate that the colours were chosen to approximate the real life colours of the desserts themselves. Are the colours at Android (operating system)#Platform usage any better? We could replace the image on this page with the main article's wiki-chart if necessary and then tweak the colours all day long. – Steel 19:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

They were simpler before in all fairness. There's too much squashed in now. Can we get a consensus on something similar to iOS version history? Include the two or three newest versions individually, then everything else as "older versions" grouped together. I'll post a link to the iOS pie for comparison. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:15, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Examples:

Global Android version distribution as of February 2017. Android Lollipop is the most widely used version of Android, running on 32.9% of all Android devices accessing Google Play, while Android Marshmallow runs on 30.7% of devices.

Platform usage as measured by the App Store on February 23, 2017.

1. iOS 10 (79%)
2. iOS 9 (16%)
3. Earlier (5%)

Can we limit the Android pies to something similar? Maybe not as restrictive but trim it a little in future? Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 10:22, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

@Steel -- No, these colors are equally horrible. See the basic 16 colors for what one would expect to see and what would be best:

Web_colors#HTML_color_names IF/when more than 16 colors are needed, then extra colors might be added. But the basic 16 colors are quite sufficient here. There is no need to tweak the colors too much, just have them be distinguishable.

Naki (talk) 09:34, 1 April 2017 (UTC) 

Jenova20, NO. Limiting the Android OS versions chart to just 3 colors (items) the way iOS pie chart looks is a really bad idea, so do not do that.Naki (talk) 09:34, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Addition - OK, yes - maybe in the future when there are too many Android OS versions to show them all, the list/chart could be made shorter/simpler by combining some of those. But currently I do not think with the versions released up to now that would be any good. 09:36, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

@Naki "Maybe not as restrictive but trim it a little in future" I don't think you read my message since you replied twice and both replies are contradictory...Thanks anyway though ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 08:29, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

You are welcome. Sorry, the 2 images get in the way, so I might have missed a bit of your text. Anyway, I do not think the number of colors is the matter here, but the (badly chosen) colors themselves.

Basic 16 colors provide plenty colors to choose from. And the future you/I quote is likely at least 2-3 years away, I think. P.S. Can you move both images to the right? (so they do not get in the way in the way they do now) Naki (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Sooo..? What happens now? No one up to the task at all? :( Naki (talk) 12:13, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Shades of Android green

1. Earlier (10.9%)
2. KitKat (18.8%)
3. Lollipop (32%)
4. Marshmallow (31.2%)
5. Nougat (7.1%)

Google's logo colors

1. Earlier (10.9%)
2. KitKat (18.8%)
3. Lollipop (32%)
4. Marshmallow (31.2%)
5. Nougat (7.1%)

The chart needed to be updated with the new distribution numbers, so I replaced the image with a simple {{Pie chart}}. For the colors I chose the same ones used in the table. Also, I replaced the mention to Marshmallow in the caption to Nougat. I don't know what the original intent was (either to mention the two most widely used versions, or the most used and the newest).--Titore (talk) 02:43, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

The original idea was to have something similar to the IOS pie chart where we replace the earliest versions with a single section called "earlier" while they're still around. I figured that way we could avoid up to 10 or more entries on the pie chart, with very similar colours in some cases, making for a difficult comparison. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 08:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I think using shades of Android green, like they do on the official distribution page, looks beautiful. Otherwise just stick to basic (white, yellow, blue, red, green) colors. Or, hey, why don't use google's logo colors at this point?

Note: versions below <10% were put together in "earlier" as suggested, but really, re-adding those almost invisible 1.0% and 0.8% shouldn't be a problem anyway; as right now earlier is basically almost only Jelly Bean (9.1%) --Titore (talk) 10:06, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I like your mockup, but i do have a few issues with it which i'd like to share: the colour scheme doesn't follow what we already have attributed to each version, i have a personal preference for pie charts going clockwise from the top (they're easier to measure with the eye), no version numbers included - which your average user will know better than the name of the version they have. Other than that i like it. A lot. It's simple and it doesn't include a long list of old versions, which is what made the old one hard to look at and like. PS. The green one is terrible. When you include multiple versions all in green it's going to be very confusing. Thanks ツ Jenova20 ^(email) 11:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Gingerbread and ICS added back

1. Gingerbread (1%)
2. Ice Cream Sandwich (0.8%)
3. Jelly Bean (9.1%)
4. KitKat (18.8%)
5. Lollipop (32%)
6. Marshmallow (31.2%)
7. Nougat (7.1%)

Well, the whole point of this discussion is to change the colors.

The current chart already follows the same color scheme attributed to each version, exactly the same CSS color code, and it doesn't look great. I don't think Gingerbread and ICS were what made the chart look bad, but the colors used; see the new chart I made with them added back.

The version numbers are not included because some code names summarize two or more version numbers, like it is on google's page; eg "Jelly Bean 9.1%" is actually 4.1 (3.2%) + 4.2 (4.6%) + 4.3 (1.3%). I personally would try to avoid crowding the cart, since alongside on the left there's already a table explaining what each code name's version number is, but it wouldn't be much of an issue adding those too.

>I have a personal preference for pie charts going clockwise from the top

I don't think we can control that on the current {{Pie chart}} template. What's funny is that on the italian wiki it works exactly as you said by default.--Titore (talk) 12:27, 8 May 2017 (UTC)