Android, Google’s mobile operating system, has matured a lot over the past year. It’s running on 1.4 billion devices (up from 1 billion last year) and its most popular app store, Google Play, has more than 1 billion active users. In the last quarter, IDC estimates that Android held 82.8 percent of the global smartphone market. As its newest iteration, 6.0 Marshmallow, rolls out, Android’s going incredibly, undeniably strong.
The pace of Android’s development hasn’t mirrored its meteoric growth. Android Marshmallow is less about defying expectations than about small, albeit welcome, improvements. In 6.0, it’s easier to tell which aspects of your personal info apps can access. Background tasks now hibernate when not in use, to save battery. And a souped-up version of Google Now scans your screen to serve up contextually useful links.
For many of those 1.4 billion devices owners, the question is whether Android Marshmallow represents an upgrade compelling enough to warrant the purchase of a new phone or tablet. Fragmentation’s a fact of Android — only 7.9 percent of Android devices run 5.1, the latest version available, and 38.9 percent run Android 4.4. And because many older devices won’t see updates, determining whether or not to get Marshmallow can become a buying decision.
The answer isn’t cut and dry, unfortunately. The perceived value of 6.0 Marshmallow will largely depend on your past Android experience: Lollipop users won’t notice many changes, but users coming from KitKat and Jelly Bean will. The lure of Marshmallow will depend on how much value you place on the areas that have seen the largest improvements (privacy and mobile payments, to name two).
