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Study says Android 4.0 and iOS 8 are most likely to crash your apps
Ever had the feeling that certain phone operating systems are more likely to crash your apps than others? It's not just you. Crittercism has posted its latest breakdown of crash reports from about 20,000 apps, and it's clear that certain operating systems aren't as friendly as others. On Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is most likely to wreck your day; KitKat (4.4) is close behind, while Lollipop's early reputation for glitches apparently doesn't affect apps. With Apple devices, however, the tables turn. While iOS' app crash rate is lower overall, iOS 8 is a bit more problematic than its predecessor. That's not surprising given that Apple hasn't had as much time to tackle issues in 8, but you may feel better if you're still holding on to 7.
Crittercism offers some interesting statistics about iOS 8's crash rate
Crittercism's have released the first-ever Mobile Experience Benchmark Report: Apple Edition, collecting the iOS performance data from their 1 billion active users. You can view the complete report here, but there's one aspect of the data that will interest anyone who wonders if iOS 8 is really crashing more than iOS 7. You're not crazy, iOS 8 has a 78% higher crash rate than iOS 7.1, but it's not as bad as it sounds. 78% sounds like a lot, but the increase is only from 2% to 3.56%. Obviously the increase in crashes is frustrating, but as the OS is patched this number will continue to get better. The issues most noticeable on older devices, with the iPhone 4 through 5s hitting a 3.57% crash rate for apps. The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ are currently only averaging a 2.63% and 2.11% crash rating respectively. You can find the rest of Crittercism's report here as a free download.
Study shows which Android and iOS versions are most likely to crash apps
If you've ever argued that your new smartphone is more reliable than what you're replacing, you now have some evidence to back up your claims. Crittercism has posted a study showing that apps running in newer versions of Android and iOS (such as KitKat and iOS 7.1) are considerably less likely to crash; you're practically inviting headaches if you stick with a phone running Gingerbread or iOS 6. The research also suggests that the Galaxy S 4 and iPhone 5 are the most trustworthy devices, while tablets of all kinds are relatively crash-happy. The findings aren't shocking when both Apple and Google have both spent years fixing bugs, and it's notable that the study only covers crashes with third-party apps -- they don't address first-party software glitches. Still, this data is as good an excuse as any to upgrade an aging handset stuck on an old platform.
Daily Update for February 6, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen.
Study: iOS apps crash more than Android apps do
Mobile OS crash analysis firm Crittercism (Really? Who's naming this stuff?) has posted the chart above, which shows that as a percentage of crashes overall, the latest version of iOS claims the highest total. In fact, many versions of iOS show a large percentage of crashes, and clearly iOS overall seems more prone to have an app crash rather than Android. Of course, there are quite a few qualifiers here. This data has been normalized, so we can presume that this isn't just a quirk of the numbers: There are likely more crashes happening on iOS devices than Android devices, and not just because there's more iOS apps being used (Crittercism says it monitored about 215 million app launches across all platforms, and there were three times as many launched on iOS, but again, this chart shows a percentage of all app launches). So why more crashing? Crittercism suggests it's because iOS 5.0.1 had just released, while the latest version of Android had not yet arrived, and the new OS was causing more issues than usual in Apple's system. I would also suggest that iPhone users (who have likely paid more for their phones) tend to overtax their devices -- keep in mind this is just an app crashing, not the full iOS, and we've all done that once or twice, right? And as you can see, there's a fair amount of crashes on older iOS phones, which means customers might be running newer apps on older hardware, almost always a recipe for disaster. At any rate, interesting figures. With so much more usage on iOS devices (both from skilled and not-so-skilled developers, and users of both types as well), it's not that surprising that there are so many more crashes. Have crashes on iOS seriously affected your user experience?
