This is something I’ve tried to point out before, but I wasn’t as succinct as Daring Fireball. The great thing about iOS devices thus far is that they actually have a chance to age, instead of dying swift and artificial deaths after a year of use. iOS 3.x doesn’t run very well on the three […]
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Daring Fireball on “letting high-end phones turn into low-end phones”

Jun 17th 2010 by

This is something I’ve tried to point out before, but I wasn’t as succinct as Daring Fireball. The great thing about iOS devices thus far is that they actually have a chance to age, instead of dying swift and artificial deaths after a year of use. iOS 3.x doesn’t run very well on the three year old iPhone 2G, but it definitely runs and allows users to install modern App Store offerings. Gruber points out that developers don’t need to do much to support older iOS devices, either (although I’d argue “do as much as on other platforms”).

This is something that many other smartphone manufacturers seem to neglect, and it is a very glaring flaw in the Android OS model (I can say this with some experience now that I’ve had the chance to use a loaner Motorola Dext). There are just so many apps I can’t use on a phone that was released this year in Canada, because they need Android 1.6, and the Dext is on 1.5. If you buy an iPhone 4 in a month’s time, however, it’ll be able to run everything. Granted, it will cost a bit more, but it’s a safe bet your it will receive a free upgrade to iOS 5 when the time comes (and likely iOS 6, if Apple keeps the trend). More smartphones manufacturers need to follow through on global firmware updates.

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