Android 12 is likely one of the platform’s most formidable updates in latest historical past, bringing a serious design overhaul to each nook of the working system. It has additionally been one of many rockiest Android OS launches prior to now few years. Both Samsung and OnePlus paused the rollout of their steady Android 12-based updates amid experiences of great bugs. Google itself has addressed a laundry record of bug experiences from Pixel 6 house owners, simply because it’s attempting to persuade them it’s lastly found out easy methods to construct a really premium cellphone. What within the heck is occurring?

The quick reply is that there are some distinctive complicating elements at play this 12 months but additionally that Android is inherently somewhat bit messy — that simply comes with the territory whenever you’re designing a pleasant public park in comparison with Apple’s walled backyard. Despite a refreshed look and a few interesting new high-end handsets, Android continues to be Android — the great and the dangerous.

Android 12’s launch began predictably sufficient with a proper announcement at Google I/O in May 2021. After that, the timeline seems somewhat totally different from earlier years. A full steady launch got here a month later than ordinary, on October 4th, 2021. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro launched later that month with Android 12 pre-loaded. A handful of bugs have been to be anticipated, however Google’s December Pixel replace included dozens of fixes regardless of Google having that additional month.

Even worse, the December patch itself proved problematic as some Pixel 6 house owners complained about community connection issues worsened by the replace. Google halted the replace and later removed it from its archive to stop guide downloads. When requested, the corporate didn’t supply a proof for the problematic replace however pointed to a statement {that a} repair is coming in late January that may embody all the bug fixes deliberate for the December patch.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Google’s not alone in having bother with its new OS. Samsung customers in South Korea reported serious problems with their Galaxy Fold 3 and Flip 3 units after putting in the One UI 4.0 (Android 12) steady launch, together with flickering shows and bricked telephones. Samsung acknowledged the issue and responded initially by releasing a fourth beta version of the software program to repair bugs launched by the steady launch.

OnePlus’ steady launch wasn’t so steady, both: its Android 12 pores and skin was so buggy that the corporate paused its launch, like Google, after it was broadly criticized. In a short assertion, OnePlus defined that the actual fact this launch marked the corporate’s try to combine its OxygenOS and ColorOS codebases into the identical construct “led to the software experience not being smooth” and that its software program workforce “collected the Community’s feedback and released a new build of OxygenOS 12 within a week to deliver a better user experience.”

In every case, these “stable” releases have been something however, and none of those corporations provided a lot element about what went mistaken. To try to determine what the heck is occurring, we talked to Mishaal Rahman, former editor-in-chief of XDA Developers, who’s well-known for digging into Android codebases and discovering Google’s secrets and techniques. Speaking to the Pixel 6 bugs specifically, Rahman guesses that it has lots to do with the unusually giant dimension of the replace. “Many people have called it, myself included, the biggest OS update to Android since Android 5.0 Lollipop, and that was many years ago. There are just so many massive changes to the interface and to the feature set.”

He additionally means that Google’s dedication to concern a brand new Android replace yearly could make issues worse when it’s attempting to take action a lot, and the self-imposed one-year growth cycle doesn’t go away a lot wiggle room within the timeline. “They started immediately after Android 11 was released to the public — and they have a hard cutoff date… After that, they just focus on fixing bugs.” Delay any longer, and so they’d threat bumping into subsequent 12 months’s growth cycle.

It’s additionally doable that the try to deliver well timed Android updates to non-Google units wound up backfiring. Android cellphone house owners have been asking for quicker updates for a very long time — exterior of Google’s Pixel telephones and expensive flagships, many units face lengthy waits for OS updates. Sure sufficient, the updates have come quicker this 12 months. Case in level: Samsung customers are accustomed to ready about three months after an Android steady launch to get their completed One UI replace with the brand new model of the OS, however this 12 months, One UI 4.0 arrived only one and a half months after Android 12. But the best way issues have gone this 12 months, many customers would probably have opted for a slower, steady replace quite than a quick one riddled with bugs.

OnePlus, by its personal admission, confronted distinctive problems because it tried to merge Oppo’s ColorOS and OxygenOS on the identical time it included Android 12’s adjustments. That’s a recipe for bugs, Rahman explains. “Devices that are upgrading from Android 11 with OxygenOS 11 to OxygenOS 12 are having a lot of settings and features being migrated.”

To illustrate the issue, he describes a bug that some Realme system house owners have encountered: customers who restore settings from an outdated Android cellphone when establishing a Realme system would typically discover the Night Light setting constantly enabled on their new phone. This occurred due to a mismatch between Realme and Google’s open-source implementations of Night Light. OxygenOS 12, he suspects, suffered from related points. “It’s those kinds of bugs that are plaguing this update.”

While it’s nonetheless arduous to grasp how an update as buggy as OnePlus’ preliminary OxygenOS 12 launch earned a “stable” designation, it makes somewhat extra sense whenever you account for the massive problem of merging two codebases.

While all of those elements probably contributed to an unusually troubled launch, the underlying downside is a well-known one. By its nature, Android is a fragmented ecosystem. There’s no straight line from Android 12 to the Galaxy S21 or OnePlus 9 — each main replace sees handoffs between the producer, carriers, and Google, all of which end in delays. Initiatives like Project Treble appear to have helped velocity up some components of the method, however until Google takes some drastic actions, no person can fully repair the issue.

While OEMs and Google push to get updates out quicker, they’ve additionally made a push to provide extra attention-grabbing, premium units. OnePlus seems to be separating its “flagships, but cheaper” ethos into two totally different realms: “flagships” just like the 9 Pro and separate “cheaper” telephones a la the Nord sequence. Samsung is making a critical try to deliver foldables into the mainstream. Google has positioned the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro as true flagships, with customized processors and a design language that’s extra polished and fewer quirky than earlier generations. This buggy OS rollout dangers taking a number of the shine off of the polished picture these system makers are hoping to domesticate — in truth, the damage may already be done.

It’s a disgrace as a result of they’ve succeeded with the {hardware}. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are two of the very best telephones Google has ever made. OnePlus’ ambition to create a real flagship competitor has resulted in a refined product that’s the real article. And this time round, Samsung appears to have succeeded at making a foldable cellphone that has captured the eye of extra than simply tech geeks. But behind the shiny {hardware}, the software program expertise can nonetheless be uneven at instances. That’s simpler to forgive on a midrange or price range cellphone, nevertheless it’s robust to abdomen from a premium system.

It’s unlikely, although, that this unusually troubled launch will sway important numbers of individuals to bail on Android; as painful as a few of these bugs have been, they’re most likely not sufficient to push customers over the hurdles of leaping ship to Apple. Rahman thinks that most often, the ecosystem lock-in is just too sturdy.

“You’d lose out on so many apps and services that you pay for. If you have other devices that interact with your smartphone, you’d lose access to that, or that access would be diminished in some way. I don’t see it as a significant factor convincing people to turn away from a particular device.” Those limitations exist on Apple’s aspect as effectively, after all. Recently surfaced emails from Apple executives suggest that iMessage stays unique to iPhones as a mechanism to maintain Apple customers with Apple.

Apple has additionally had its share of software program stumbles, to make sure. But it’s typically a extra predictable expertise — in the event you’re prepared to reside inside the boundaries of that walled backyard. And there’s the flipside of Android’s fragmented existence: there’s no single entity dictating the {hardware} and software program. In Apple’s ecosystem, you get what it deems to be the proper options on the proper time, and that’s that. Foldables? Maybe in a number of years. A rainbow of customizable system colours? Forget it. Life is a bit more attention-grabbing — if, at instances, unpredictable and uneven — exterior of the backyard partitions.