Speaking of beta programs and doing it right – here’s how things are going at the other end of the spectrum.
Today we’re bringing you Android 14 Beta 4, continuing our work on polish and performance as we get closer to the general availability release of Android 14. Beta 4 is available for Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, in addition to the rest of the supported Pixel family, so you can test your applications on devices spanning multiple form factors and directly experience the work we’re doing to improve the large-screen and foldable device experience.
The fact Android betas are only available on an incredibly small subset of Android devices stands in such stark contrast to how Apple does their program. Of course, we all know why that’s the case, but that doesn’t mean Google gets a pass. I have an Android device running Android 13. I should be able to install Android 14 betas. End of story.
Rant aside, how far along the development process for Android 14 are we?
Beta 4 is our second Platform Stable Android 14 release, which means that the developer APIs and all app-facing behaviors are final for you to review and integrate into your apps, and you can publish apps on Google Play to devices running Android 14 at the official API level.
That indicates we’re relatively close to release, meaning most Android users can expect to upgrade somewhere halfway 2024, or when they buy a new device, or not at all.
This is that same distinction from Linux – a distro is comparable to macOS or Windows, not “Linux” not KDE or gnome, the whole distro. When a new kernel ships, you don’t get it in your distro right away, it takes a minute. It’s the same here – Samsung’s Android is not the same distro as Google’s Android. Heck, the core of the Android project isn’t even the same distro as the one on Google’s own phones. These vendor distros of Android are distros, and should be thought of as such.
Samsung, or LG, or whatever made your phone can and sometimes does release a beta of their distro. If you want them to move faster take it up with them. Blaming Google is weird.
(MS managed to avoid the problem with different OEM vendors making their own Windows distros, by basically just being insecure crap where large important parts of Windows are replaceable at given time, but that’s another story.)
Just wanted to expand this out, because the thinking about what an operating system is, seems so tied to MS and Apple business models, or at least to their product release models,
Windows is a software product that Microsoft licenses to others, mostly to OEMs, as a single product, with elevating skus. It tries to be consistent about supported hardware (mostly), so that if you have Windows, it’s Windows, The one product. In practice, you get entirely different stack of crapware based on which OEM you buy from, but we don’t call that a different distro, because at least most of the underlying software is the same (notably, except anti-virus), and Microsoft has placed some restrictions on what can be replaced, despite different kinds of hardware being used to run it. They have a stable set of system software (OEMs don’t replace important things like TCP stacks any more), and have a stable ABI. They’ve even been enforcing that more in recent versions, by requiring certain hardware features to be present, in order to use Windows.
Linux is not an operating system, it’s a kernel that is used to build operating systems. It’s really distributions (distros) that are most comparable to what Windows, Android, or macOS/iOS/etc. are. Ubuntu is not like Arch Linux, they are different operating systems that both use Linux and GNU. At least thats how I would define operating system.
Android has more Linux-y kind of distribution model, compared with Windows or Apple OSs. Its core is open source, and it’s build on Linux. Its application execution layer and Google Play arguably define the platform, with a stable ABI. But each vendor tunes their OEM distributions quite differently (we actually see this even with some Windows laptops, where if you buy the ultra efficient intel chip laptop, you are going to get throttled with inadvisable Intel APIs that you can disable, for “cool and quiet” operation… and don’t get me started on screen dimming that can’t be disabled based on power draw). Anyway, the Android OEM gets to tune and skin their distros, sometimes add additional stores, rarely remove the google play store, and while it’s still technically Android if you do all that, just liek how Arch and Ubuntu are still Linux, these vendor modded versions of Android are very much like a distro. The vendors are changing important things to distinguish and differentiate them from one another – on purpose (not always to benefit the user). It’s so much more like a distro that happens to be tied to a vendor’s hardware, like how Apple does it. Samsung’s Android distro is not like Sony’s, or Google’s, or whoever else is still making phones. There seems to be an implicit desire for Google to make this work more like Microsoft’s model, where Microsoft dictates what OEMs are and aren’t allow to add or modify, and enforces some hardware rules – I don’t get that. Android has a better, more open model.
Apple is more product focused. They can get away with tying their OS (and therefor, their beta programs) to their hardware, because they don’t let anyone else use their software, let alone modify it. There is no macOS distribution, except the one Apple releases. So of course they are going to have an easier time running a beta program. But again, there is something being missed here. Apple regularly kills the performance of older hardware, in favor of new, and we don’t see that in Android land, because Android has a BETTER model for releasing updates, that doesn’t actually require slowing down old hardware. I’ve described this before – basically, most of what makes Android Android, runs in user land, and can be updated without updating core parts of the OS. Even better, large parts of their SDK can be embedded in app bundles, so you don’t even have to have the latest version of Android, to run the latest apps. It’s better. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the way Apple does it.
Again, Google’s model with Android is not perfect – and OEM vendors routinely prove they are untrustworthy – they SHOULD update their platforms at least security backports, more than they do – and those fixes are available upstream, they just can’t be bothered. But how is that Google’s fault? It’s like complaining about Microsoft if HP doesn’t release a security update for their bios. This doesn’t make sense.
In all fairness Apple is targeting a select number of devices with iOS. Devices they sell directly. While Android is a genera purpose (mobile) operating system that runs on everything. So if you want the same thing on Android phone as you get on iPhone. The clue is in the article. Buy Pixel.
Yet it’s no problem with windows…
If we focus on the context of this article. Then if you want to participate in Android Beta program best if you buy a Pixel device. You should then get the same thing as Apple is being praised for. As you mentioned Windows. Joining Windows Insider program should indeed get you there too.
Well, it was a problem for Windows given how it didn’t go anywhere in the Phone market 😉
Tell that to my Pixel 4a…
Since the authors on this site moan constantly about ads on other platforms, it’s somewhat laughable that your own cookie consent popup violates GDPR blatantly. There is no clear way to unsubscribe from all (non-required) cookies and overall the cookie popup is bloated with redundant information in order to obfuscate the user experience. Sad!