iOS 5 'crashes more apps' than Android
Recent data has shown that iOS apps crash more often than apps running on the Android platform. The data comes from Crittercism – monitoring software that records app crashes as a percentage of app launches and makes money by sending reports and diagnostics to the app's creators. After looking at data taken about app crashes …
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Not sure which apps use this Crittercism thing, but for serious developers using the Android NDK - for performance reasons - memory management IS still a big issue and developers have to think about it.
Even in iOS 5 I still prefer manually managing memory. Any automatic garbage collection system is only going to be worse and introduce slow downs at the wrong times.
Having just jumped from iOS to Android, the one thing I have noticed is that when an app crashes on Android it is usually far more visible. On iOS when an app crashes it just closes with no warning message - and it happened fairly regularly on iOS5, more so than iOS4 on my 3GS, as well as being slower and draining the battery quicker - iOS5 on the 3GS was a big mistake in my opinion (my wifes 6 month old 3GS is the same since she upgraded to iOS5 and she doesn't have anywhere near as many apps and services running than I did).
Andoid on the other hand, presents the 'Application is not responding, Force Close?' message so at least you know there is a problem. So far, I haven't seen it too often although I don't have too many apps installed yet!.
I don't use auto-update unless it is a reputable application, but its nice to have the option. On iOS when there were updates I just tended to hit the Update All button in the Appstore whenever there were updates, however with Android maybe you have to a bit more careful!
Android
"I don't use auto-update unless it is a reputable application"
Pointless sentiment on Android, auto-updates are disabled for an app when the update changes the required permissions, you have to manually update and re-accept the permissions in the process. Not auto-updating your apps on the other hand means you may well miss out on security fixes for longer than necessary...
Android warns You about the updates
I have auto-updates disabled. Color me paranoid, but I have.
I don't risk forgetting some upgrade: the OS nicely warns me, at the status bar, that there are updates - and for which software.
So, yes. I may update a few hours later - when I'm within an AP range - but not such a big delay...
I'd rather see a pure Android analysis
Show me a breakdown of crashes by whether or not the bloody thing has Sense on it. I'm sure the crap installed by HTC caused most of my woes before I finally got Cyanogenmod installed.
Cyanogenmod
I've actually had more crashes and hangs since installing cm7 on my previously motoblur-infested Defy. Mostly with stuff that accesses hardware other than the screen. Still a much nicer UX overall.
On my Xoom sometimes there is no honeycomb optimized version of a certain app so I have to use a phone app and that generally doesn't work well.
Never experienced anything like that on my brothers ipad (iOS 4.3.5)
iOS 5 does crash more often
It is true in my experience of one :-) the mail app connected to my companies exchange server is constantly dying, or requires me to manually kill it on occasion to be able to receive push emails. IN addition it is very very slow to retrieve very basic text only emails.
In comparison, my old Android HTC Sensation XE and my new Galaxy Nexus have no such problems.
If I disable the exchange mail sync, it becomes more stable, but as its a company phone that defeats the object for which it was provided!
My wife refuses to upgrade to iOS 5 simply because of the constant app crashing I have experienced on my iPhone 4. I wish I had stuck with iOS 4 now....
Is it not possible to roll back? I haven't an iPhone so I'm only guessing.
lol
option to... anything on an iphone
brilliant line, you owe me a new keyboard
Language problem perhaps?
I would imagine it can be put down to the fact that Android uses a familiar widespread syntax (Java style) and iOS uses Objective C which is around for other platforms but is almost exclusively used on OSX and iOS.
It's quite a different syntax than Java and C++, so I can only imagine there are a lot of inexperienced iOS app developers around.
Not 100% Convinced
My experience of iOS 5, for what it's worth, is that it's pretty damned stable (for me). With a notable exception of BBC iPlayer, which would crash on start-up on about 25% of occasions. That particular app was updated recently and the release notes acknowledge that it includes a fix for crash-on-startup. I wonder how many millions of recorded crashes were accounted for by this one hugely popular app?
My experience of Android, for what it's worth, is that it's also pretty damned stable. Unless you are one of the mindless numpties who gets clever and thinks it's a good idea to install a Task Killer on the device. In which case you don't understand how Android works, and you are simply begging for your device to crap out on you.
I am a little intrigued by the stats in the article, though. The trend seems to imply that it won't be very long before every app launch results in a crash (look at the way the graph is headed), and all that Android is doing is better keeping pace with iOS in this regard. Such convergence looks a little suspicious to me.
I run iOS5 and apart from the previously noted iPlayer app (which looks like an bug with the app not iOS) it's been very stable - of course YMMV. Apps crashing seem more likely to be problems with the app rather than the OS?
"Why didn't they give data for Windows phone?"
"My WinPhone never crashes ever ever it is the best thing I ever had and I just signed up to tell you how great it is and you should try it"
C'mon, astroturfers, do your job...
Could it be that there are too few WinTards to make a statistically significant bump in the data?
My WinPhone never crashes ever ever it is the best thing I ever had and I just signed up to tell you how great it is and you should try it.....
and you don't need to install completely different firmware or some kind of quad-cored monstrosity to stop it running like a dog
(PS will this do?)
"My WinPhone never crashes..."
'coz you have no apps for it.
Mail app on IOS 5...
... is really bad for crashing when you reply to emails. I've worked out if you delete the entire email thread before you reply its fine. Very strange bug in the application. You have thought this would have been found in testing.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3394146?start=0&tstart=0
Paris because.... well because ;)
O bugger...
I was reading this article on my iPad and it cra
Hang On
So an app crashes and it is the fault of the OS???? Nothing to do with the hack that wrote the app then?
Re: the hack that wrote the app
Not the OS, no. But the vendor? Certainly.
Apple claim that their walled-garden approach to apps is to ensure that the badly written apps don't make it as far as the end-users. They are quick to point out that there's no quality control at the Android store.
On the strength of this (partial, in all senses of the word) evidence, it doesn't make any difference.
May I be the first to enquire...
...are the iPhoney users holding it the right way?
I got nothing out of the Forbes article...
... other than that there are some people who should never be allowed to make pie charts. Ever. I've seen explosions in abattoirs that weren't as disgusting as those pie charts.
The only app on my iPhone that crashes in Google+. The rest work just fine, so I have to wonder where all this Apple crash data is coming from, considering that this think tank is Google Funded. of course they couldn't go against the org who is funding them. I call BS on this "crash study".
@ Those running IOS5 with no problems.
Just because your device is OK with the apps you run doesn't mean there aren't problems.
Personally I've found this iPad crashes more whilst using Safari tha it did before the upgrade to IOS5 (I recall it crashing a few times before the upgrade but now it crashes on Some sites every time). Other apps seem to crash more too but, to be honest, I think they were fairly crash-prone anyhow so Apple can't be blamed for them, or perhaps only blamed a little since the point of walled-garden app stores and limited configurabilitynis supposed to be increased stability.
Then again, this is just the model of device and apps I use, so perhaps the survey is wrong after all?
Another sample of 1
The only crashes I've experienced are with the Guardian app. and it's happened less on IOS5. Mind you, I don't play games or connect to Exchange servers (same thing really ;-)
I've plenty to criticise Apple for, but this isn't one of them.
My anecdote
My iPad 1 crashes on Safari pretty frequently, but it's very elegant about it - you just get booted back to the desktop, which gives the impression that it wasn't a crash, more of a miscommunication. Android gives an honest "App dead; force-closed" popup. If anything, I would think iOS crashes are underreported for this reason.
I wonder...
All this discussion reminds me of my days supporting clients in the field. Every now and then they'd pay me to make a house call about a PC problem. Usually something about it "crashing or going so sloooooowwwww". Once I arrived and took a look at things I'd notice all the file sharing applications and instant messenger clients sitting active or waiting to pounce in the task bar. I would then ask, "Do you have teenagers?" Then I'd get the sheepish acknowledgements. Then look at the browser with the countless tacked on "tool bars" and other worthless spyware ridden cruft to understand where the problems lay. Now that's not to say there aren't problems in the base OS, there always are, but to compound said weaknesses with unstable crapware is only to beg for a justifiable beating.
So you're saying that Safari is unstable crapware?
Under IOS you only run a few applications simultaneously and even then some are just running cuncurrently, there should be no crapware services running because it's not possible to start any as a user. If software is somehow staying resident after the user has closed it then it's the OS that's at fault because Apple own the API and have full control over applications -- users have no control. Also, each app is supposedly sandboxed and, therefore, should have no impact on any other.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the whole point of locked-down walled-garden OSs is that they are stable and the user can't mess them up. So crashes under IOS are either Apple's fault because they allow apps to crash or Apple's fault because their walled garden is broken.
Android I have less experience with but left unaltered (i.e. not rooted) it ought to be prett much the same situation.
Windows.. reliable???
I've not had much exposure to Android but I have been surprised to find Windows Phone much more reliable than iOS - seriously!
I don't have a problem with crashing apps...
... but then I use my smartphone as a phone, I leave the computing stuff to a computer and for taking photos I use a real camera.
I also have a life....
Once an iPod always an iPod?
Obviously it was originally designed as a clever mp3/video player, not a multi tasking computer.
Whilst it's never worked very well since it became a phone it still looks nice.
Sad but true
The problem with iOS 5 is definitely there, but it's not like it wasn't there with 4 as well. I'm a die-hard Apple fan for many, many years, but I certainly noticed the difference between the "get it to market as fast as possible" mindset of the phone/pad world and the more considered approach to product releases in the computer division. Particularly in consideration of Apple's walled garden, where nothing gets released without first having been at least tried out and looked at, the number of issues that cause things to break is a little disappointing. In fact, unless there's some very real truth behind the allegations that Crittercism is not quite looking at a level playing field, it's pretty inexplicable.
I'm sure it'll get fixed in due course, but the fact that everyone is constantly in a mad rush to offer features over finesse will always mean that products are not as polished as they could be. The extent to which we all just accept it because of a nice shiny presentation is the extent to which we'll have to deal with the failure of things we need to work.
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