14 DAY TRIAL // Apteligent conducted a study on Android manufacturers and made recommendations based on which one delivers the best user experience when it comes to OS update speed and crash rate. Unsurprisingly, Motorola pushes out updates the fastest, with Nexus smartphones not being taken into account.
In order to conduct the study, Apteligent analyzed OS updates from multiple smartphone manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC, Motorola, and ZTE. Nexus smartphones were excluded from this part of the study, since they always receive the latest OS updates on the day of their release.
The study took into consideration the time it took manufacturers to upgrade their smartphones from Android 5.x Lollipop to Android 6.0 Marshmallow and found that the companies can be divided into two categories: those that push updates in under three months and those that take a little over five months.
Motorola pushes updates the fastest in the US, as the company was the first to release updates to its Moto X Style smartphones in about two months. The company is followed by LG, which pushed updates to the LG G4 and HTC in under three months.
Samsung and Sony needed about five months to release the update, which could be understandable, considering the wide range of devices that the two companies offer. ZTE released the Android M update to some devices in its Axon line in February 2016.
Sony has the lowest overall crash rate
The study also analyzed the crash rate for the same smartphone manufacturers and took into consideration apps that have over half a million app loads a day, as they tend to have lower crash rates and are optimized.
Sony was the manufacturer with the lowest crash rates recorded on its smartphones, about 0.08% in average, followed by Motorola, HTC, Samsung, LG, and ZTE.
When it comes to device fragmentation, the study revealed that Russia records the highest device fragmentation rate, followed by Ukraine and the Czech Republic. The United States falls in the 18th position, with the Galaxy S5 owning about 12% of usage share, and the top 10 devices reach about 44%.