KOREA: Taking a look back at the week’s news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit highlights a number of stories including Google reducing security on Android 4.3 and older devices, nobody is using Lollipop 5.0, Four minutes to sell out the Nokia N1 tablet, Samsung upcoming Galaxy mistake, Xiaomi’s new phablet, Sony’s highs and lows, Adobe Lightroom for Android, and Project Ara goes on sale.
Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android over the last seven days (and you can read the weekly Apple news digest here).
Google Stops Vital Security Update To Android 4.3 And Below
Thomas Fox-Brewster highlights what could be the biggest Android story of the week. Google has stopped pushing security updates to the WebView tool if you are using Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (or any earlier flavour of Android).
Without openly warning any of the 939 million affected, Google has decided to stop pushing out security updates for the WebView tool within Android to those on Android 4.3, better known as Jelly Bean, or below, according to appalled security researchers. That means two-thirds of users won’t receive cover from Google, the researchers noted.
Over 60% of Android devices which connected to Google Play between Dec 30 2014 and Jan 5 2015 (via Google’s Android dashboard) ran the older version of Android. All of these devices will no longer receive the security updates
WebView allows an application to open up a web page as part of that application (as opposed to passing a URL to a web browser app). Tod Beardsley is an engineering manager for Rapid7: “WebView, for many, many attackers, is Android, just as Internet Explorer [Microsoft’s browser] is usually the best vector for attackers who want to compromise Windows client desktops.”
Nobody Is Using Lollipop
One other interesting data point from the Android Dashboard is the non-appearance of Lollipop. Version 5 of Android OS has been released by Google (and is available on a number of Nexus devices) but the slow roll-out is even slower than last year’s KitKat. After a month, KitKat reached 1.1% of the Google Play traffic. Lollipop? Not even o.1%.
Whether it is taking time for manufacturers to update their firmwares, carriers taking longer to certify the new firmwares, coding issues, or reticence to push Lollipop onto older handsets when newer Lollipop handsets are on the way, this illustrates one of the systemic problems of Android.
Irrespective of the reasons, the rollout of Lollipop is not going smoothly. Google is spending a huge amount of time and momentum to push the message out of the new operating system. Meanwhile two bug-fix updates have already been announced, and at the current rate the fixes in Android 5.1 might not be available to consumers before the end of July 2015.
Nokia N1 Sales Off To A Strong Start
The Android powered Nokia N1 tablet is now available to buy and the initial sales figures are promising (reports Seeking Alpha). It took just four minutes to sell out the first batch of 20,000 tablets, and there are over half a million customers waiting in the digital line.
Strictly speaking the N1 Tablet is a Foxconn device. The contract manufacturing company has licensed the Nokia name from the Finnish company and is focusing on sales in China. It’s also following Xiaomi’s model of creating scarcity and demand in the public through limited windows to purchase the device. There’s a long way to go to become an established tablet and a roaring success. Nevertheless it’s a strong and strategic start.
Samsung’s Upcoming Galaxy Mistake
It’s going to be a nervous few months for Samsung, and the biggest moment for the South Korean company will be the launch and reception of the next flagship smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S6. After the reveal, it needs to sell in far greater numbers than last year’s Galaxy S5.
Forbes’ Gordon Kelly thinks Samsung is about to make a significant strategic error by going with a larger screen on the S6:
As leaked benchmarks continue to appear for the Galaxy S6 one thing is becoming horribly clear: Samsung will step up the size game again and increase the S6 display to a whopping 5.5-inches. The Galaxy S6 will no longer compete with the iPhone 6, Samsung will run away from its principal rival altogether and pick on the slightly less intimidating iPhone 6 Plus.
If this is how the Galaxy S6 does indeed shape up it is madness. Samsung will once again leave Apple without a direct challenger to its most popular iPhone and this time – no matter how small the bezels – it will do so at a point which many believe crosses the threshold of one-handed usability. The Galaxy S6 would be a phablet and Samsung would be without a premium smartphone. Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank.