iPhone 4S to be only new iPhone next month?

[Wilt]

What value would it serve to list the update history of a device that's only been on the market for a few months ? The whole point of the article is to see what the long term support is in terms of minor and major updates, so until a device has been out for about a year that question can't be answered. I would have picked 12 months rather than 15 that the author did, but that's quibbling.

A large part of the graph is devoted to demonstrating that the phones didn't ship with the current version of the OS. Putting in newer models would paint a different picture for recent releases.

Where does it say the original iPhone is still on the current release ?

You're not reading the table correctly. It's clearly labelled "1st year after release", "2nd year after release" etc. The original iPhone came out in June 2007, so the end of the 3rd year bar would be June 2010, just before iOS 4 was released. The original iPhone got exactly a full 3 years of being at the latest major release version.

Ah yes, you're correct. Interesting way of presenting the data.

The problem with using data from Android market place access is that not everyone who owns an Android device will be using Google's market place. Some devices are preconfigured to use other app marketplaces and some people just won't install any custom apps at all. (There are even a significant number of iPhone users who just use the built in apps and never install any 3rd party apps, hard as it is for us to believe)

The ones preconfigured to use a different market are not very common. If a user isn't accessing the market how likely are they to install an update? If they're not installing apps, how much does it matter what OS version is being used?

Using such aggregate numbers also skews the results based on which Android devices sold in large numbers - if the few Android devices which did receive decent updates are also the best selling models, then the marketplace figures will reflect this. A large percentage of android phones may be current, even though a large percentage of android models are not.

I don't understand what the problem with this is. Because the original iPhone and iPhone 3G no longer receives updates should we say that 2-in-5 iPhones are no longer able to get the latest version?

Also I'm curious to know the basis of your claim of that blog being "incredibly biased" ? Are you saying the data is factually incorrect ? The chart was constructed from publicly available release dates and software update dates, there is nothing stopping you looking up specific models to see if there are any errors. Whether the guy has an anti-Android bias or not isn't relevant unless he's actually fabricated the data the table is based on, and that doesn't seem likely.

I read his other posts, he loves Apple. That's fine, but it means anything he says will have a pro-apple spin so his data shouldn't be used as a basis for your argument. Data doesn't have to be fabricated in order to be misleading.

Unfortunately I think it is as bad as it appears. While a few flagship models that "those in the know" buy may have good support (still well short of Apple's 3 years of updates though) I think a lot of the cheaper / lesser known models that joe public buy when they walk into their nearest phone store simply aren't that well supported, and the data is there to prove it.

Lets ignore the prices on his table for a second as those are for the incredibly-broken US carrier pricing system. So you're saying that a HTC Wildfire S which can be had for free on a £20/mo plan should be supported the same as an iPhone which is only free on a £43/mo plan (current Three prices)? An iPhone 3GS on the equivalent plan as the Wildfire is £25/mo, but that probably wont be getting updates for three years.

I'd like to see how well Apple would keep their phones updated if they had multiple models with different form factors, specs, etc.