As an Android user it's disheartening to see that the best mobile GMail app is available for iOS only.
As an Android user that recently downgraded from 4.0 to 2.3, it is frankly infuriating: you can only get the latest GMail app for Android if you are on 3.0+, which leaves the vast majority of Android users stuck with what is now a 4th rate app.
> As an Android user that recently downgraded from 4.0 to 2.3, it is frankly infuriating: you can only get the latest GMail app for Android if you are on 3.0+, which leaves the vast majority of Android users stuck with what is now a 4th rate app.
As of this Thursday, Gingerbread is two years old. Why would you downgrade to such an old version? That's comparable to running iOS 4 on an iPhone 3GS. I got an iPhone in June, and I'm already being told that I can't upgrade several applications because I'm not running the latest version of iOS and on the latest iPhone.
Second of all, "vast majority" is a bit of a stretch. 55% are on Gingerbread and 15% on pre-Gingebread[1], but given that Android encompasses a lot of lower-end phones that are simply feature phones as well, that's not really comparable to an iOS, which is used exclusively for smartphones. Many of those users frankly won't care that they're not able to use the latest version of the Gmail application - in fact, they may not be using it at all to begin with.
> Android users stuck with what is now a 4th rate app.
This is a secondary point of yours, but I should add that I don't consider even the Froyo version of Gmail to be a 4th rate app, let alone Gingerbread or beyond. I can name several ways that the Android app outperforms the iOS Gmail app.
I was curious about statistics regarding devices 'in the field,' and all I could find were these figures from Google such as the ones you cite (55% on Gingerbread, 15% pre-Gingerbread), which I think should be tied to a very important measuring detail—they are percentages of Android OS versions hitting the Play Store during a two week period.
I think this is a deliberate choice of reporting statistic to make the Android device world look more modern. They could report on a number of other metrics[0], but from my observation, non-power users aren't frequenting app stores—perhaps they'll download apps a few times when the device is new, but after a while their phone is as customized as it's going to get. This issue is likely compounded after a few times of hearing about some app to try, and finding that it doesn't run on the dated OS.
Basically, I think there are loads of older Android installs in the wild, whose owners aren't going to the Play Store as often as people who just bought a new phone or tablet.
[0] I think something like access to Gmail via Android would be a better representation of the real market, and that figure is likely measured within Google. If not, it could be. I doubt the numbers would be very flattering... even the Play Store access metrics aren't so great to begin with.
My phone broke mid-contract (but out of warranty) and while there are a lot of very affordable Android phones, none of them are running anything resembling a recent version of Android. It's not really comparable to running iOS 4 on an iPhone 3GS, as my phone is brand new and was only released a few months ago.
> That's a huge plus of iOS being a developer, you can safely target year old releases without a problem.
I'd say the big plus is that you can safely target only the newer releases without a problem, because power users just rush out and buy the newest iPhone when it comes out.
I got an iPhone 4S in June, and I'm already getting told that I can't upgrade certain applications because I'm not running iOS6 on an iPhone 5.
>I'd say the big plus is that you can safely target only the newer releases without a problem, because power users just rush out and buy the newest iPhone when it comes out.
Even more than that, the adoption rate for users on existing devices is just incredible.
So new devices with the newest version of the OS sell like hotcakes, existing users upgrade like crazy, and Apple pushes new version quite far backwards across those existing devices to boot.
> I got an iPhone 4S in June, and I'm already getting told that I can't upgrade certain applications because I'm not running iOS6 on an iPhone 5.
Which apps require an iPhone 5? I think this is technically possible by submitting an armv7s-only binary, but I don't see why anyone would do that. Except maybe to sell "I am rich 2".
Requiring iOS6 I can understand, because for phone-only apps, you can target almost the same devices as with iOS5 (minus iPod 3G and people who do not want to update, for e.g. performance reasons).
As an Android user that recently downgraded from 4.0 to 2.3, it is frankly infuriating: you can only get the latest GMail app for Android if you are on 3.0+, which leaves the vast majority of Android users stuck with what is now a 4th rate app.