Android 12 Rollout One of the Rockiest in Recent Memory

Android 12, one of the platform’s most ambitious updates, has seen a release that has been anything but smooth.

A new report from The Verge takes a deeper look at the issues that surround the operating system, noting that while is has some of the platform’s most aggressive updates ever, it’s been one of the most troubled launches in the past few years.

Both Samsung and OnePlus were forced to pause the rollout of their stable Android 12-based updates, while Google has addressed a number of bug reports from Pixel 6 owners, notes the report.

XDA Developers‘ former editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman, who’s known for his deep dives into Android codebases, believes that the rocky rollout has something to do with the unusually large size of the update.<

“Many people have called it, myself included, the biggest OS update to Android since Android 5.0 Lollipop, and that was many years ago,” says Rahman. “There are just so many massive changes to the interface and to the feature set.”

Rahman also suggests that Google’s staunch decision to release a new Android update every year hurts the update process, not leaving enough room to make proper improvements in the timeline.

“They started immediately after Android 11 was released to the public — and they have a hard cutoff date,” Rahman explains. “After that, they just focus on fixing bugs.”

Overall, the underlying problem, the report explains, is that Android is a fragmented ecosystem. Every major update sees handoffs between manufacturers, carriers, and Google — all of which cause delays.

While Apple has also had its share of operating system update issues, it’s usually a more predictable experience due to its walled garden ecosystem.

Read the entire report over at The Verge.