There’s a lot to love about Android, such as its open nature and the fact that you can pretty much tweak the experience any way you desire to best fit your lifestyle. Of course, like any mobile OS and ecosystem, it’s not perfect either.

Just yesterday a new fragmentation report was released, revealing how only 20% of devices are on KitKat and that there are over 18,000 distinct Android devices out there. There’s also often complaints about malware, bloatware, and the list goes on. While some of these issues are exaggerated and may not bother very many people, for this week’s Friday Debate we discuss what we would change about Andriod and its ecosystem, if we had the power.

Perhaps you’d like to see faster OS updates, better consistency in app design language, better tools for malware? Be sure to check out our responses and join in with your own thoughts in the comments!

Andrew Grush

When compared to other mobile OSes out there, the Android experience best fits what i’m looking for: an experience that I can mold into whatever I want. Okay, so most of the time I keep things pretty close to stock Android, but I like to play around with new apps, launchers and ROMs from time to time — and so it’s nice to have the option.

Bottom-line, it’s the freedom of choice that draws me to Android, both on the software and hardware front. But is the ecosystem and OS perfect? No, nothing ever is. If I could change anything about the experience, the most obvious thing would be speed of updates. I understand that iOS is able to accomplish its changes largely due to the fact it has fewer devices to maintain, but it would be nice if Android could come at least somewhat close to this experience. After all, I’m an update geek that loves to have the latest, and so that means I either find a device that is extremely well supported by custom ROMs (i.e., Oppo Find 7, OnePlus One, etc) or I stick to the Nexus 5 I’m currently rocking.

While OEMs like Motorola and HTC have improved their speed of updates recently, we’ll never see the situation completely addressed by OEMs unless Google forces OEMs’ hands. For example, Google could enforce measures that would require all new handsets (high, mid and low range) to ship with the latest version of Android and promptly (no more than 3 months) issue new updates for at least 24 months to continually be qualified for Google Play services. Then again, doing so would take away some of the “freedom” I love about Android and could cause Google more negative flack than anything. Still, there has to be a solution somewhere, such as OEMs and Google working more closely to issue updates?

As for other things I’d like to see differently, I’d love for OEMs to embrace lighter custom UIs, but I don’t want to see this forced on them by Google. After all, there are folks that like custom UIs and they should be allowed to have that choice. Beyond that, I’m really pretty satisfied by the Android experience. Sure fragmentation, OS updates, skins, (often exaggerated) malware issues, and bloatware bother me, but (to a degree) that’s one of the trade-offs when dealing with an open freer platform.

One thing I would like to see, however, is more developers embrace Android-first policies when developing apps. I realize that profits on the iOS side are higher, but the Android fanbase is massive and so there has to be plenty of untapped potential profits for the world’s most popular mobile OS.

Bogdan Petrovan