Android 11 Upgrade Report Card: Well, this is awkward

I’ve been closely monitoring how different Android device-makers do with post-sales software support for something like 97 years now, I think — and every year around this time, I brace myself for a brutal discovery.

Here’s the thing: Six months after a major operating system’s release, most phones should be running that current software. I feel like that’s a pretty obvious-seeming and uncontroversial statement to make.

And yet, every year around this time, I start crunching the numbers (and also crunching some crackers, as all that number-crunching can really make a fella famished) — and you know what I find? Almost inevitably, a shockingly large portion of the top-tier, top-dollar Android phones in the land are either still stuck on 18-month-old software or just recently got the update they should have gotten six months earlier.

The last couple cycles, at least, we saw some manner of relative progress and improvement with Android upgrade delivery times, even if the overall results were still pretty dismal. So I had hoped that this year would continue that general trajectory and show us at a minimum some more modest change in the right direction.

Um, yeah — so much for that.

If there’s one trend that shines through the data this year, it’s the same one we’ve seen pretty consistently over time: Android device-makers, on the whole, just aren’t very good at getting out software updates in a reasonably timely and reliable manner — even when it comes to their highest-paying customers. Companies can try to spin the story any way they want, but data doesn’t lie. And this year’s numbers speak volumes.

Now that we’re six full months past the launch of Android 11, it’s time to step back and look at who’s making upgrades a priority and who’s treating ’em as an afterthought. Get ready for some data-driven wake-up calls.

(Want the full nitty-gritty on how these grades were calculated? You can find a detailed breakdown of the formula and every element taken into account at the very end of this article.)

Google

JR/Google

• Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagship: 0 days (60/60 points)
• Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagship: 0 days (30/30 points)
• Communication: Excellent (10/10 points)

The one bit of unambiguously good news with this year’s Android upgrade cycle is also probably the least surprising. Google does a consistently commendable job of getting current Android software into the hands of the people who purchase its self-made Pixel products, with near-instant rollouts for all current devices and no real cause for complaint.

That hasn’t always been the case, entirely. This is actually just the third year that Google has received a 100% score in this analysis. Up until the Android 9 rollout, in 2018, the company had always either faltered slightly with its previous-gen flagship rollout or had some points docked for leaving certain models of its phones hanging longer than others and then failing to communicate anything about their progress.

With Android 11, though, it’s a completely clean slate and a shining example of how Android upgrades ought to be handled. Google announced Android 11, following its seven-month development preview period, and then started rolling the software out to its then-current-gen Pixel 4 flagship and its then-previous-gen Pixel 3 model — along with its three-year-old Pixel 2 phone and all of its midrange Pixel “a” devices, no less — on the very same day.

(For the purposes of this analysis, by the way, it’s the start of a rollout — to a flagship phone model in the U.S. — that counts, as you can read about in more detail here.)

And while Google’s usual “rolling out in waves” asterisk applied to a certain degree, with some Pixel owners not receiving the software on that very first day, Android 11 made its way to all supported Pixel devices within a reasonable amount of time and without the need for any extra communication beyond the company’s initial announcement. And sure, we could argue that Google has a unique advantage in that it’s both the manufacturer of the devices and the maker of the software — but guess what? That’s part of the Pixel package. And as a person purchasing a phone, the only thing that really matters is the experience you receive.

As usual, the results tell you all there is to know: Google’s phones are without question the most reliable way to receive ongoing updates in a timely manner on Android. It’s the only company that makes an overt guarantee about that, and it’s absolutely the only one that delivers on it.

Samsung

JR/Google

• Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagships: 91 days (47/60 points)
• Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagships: 136 days (21/30 points)
• Communication: Poor (0/10 points)

We hear a lot of buzz about how Samsung is absolutely killing it with upgrades as of late. And you know what? To the company’s credit, it has been doing better than usual — relative to its own past performance. Heck, it’s even in second place this year, though that says more about the rest of the ecosystem than about Samsung itself. But when you assess the company’s level of support with a standard, consistent scale, you see that Sammy isn’t exactly knocking it out of the park.

This year, in fact, Samsung did about the same as what it managed last year — with some very slight improvements in delivery times but not enough to move the needle on its overall score. (Since Samsung has thus far treated its Galaxy S and Galaxy Note phones as co-flagships, incidentally, I look at the delivery time to both devices and then average those figures to achieve a single score.)

And when you look back further into Android upgrade history, you realize all that’s happened over these last couple years is that Samsung has returned to the level of mediocrity it was achieving six years ago, with 2014’s Android 5.0 Lollipop rollout. The company had a rough run of horrifically bad years after that — so, yes, it has been doing better than those really rough years as of late. And it has been servicing more phones than ever and actually getting updates out to even its non-flagship phones within this initial six-month period. That’s certainly something.

But you can’t grade a company only relative to its own past letdowns and the low bar it’s established for itself. And the number of different phone models Samsung has to juggle shouldn’t be a factor for us, as people who pay for and use the devices. Again, regardless of any circumstances within the company you’re purchasing a phone from, all that ultimately matters is the experience that you, as the customer, receive.

And on that note, as usual, Samsung has made no effort whatsoever to communicate with its customers about its upgrade process or what can be expected along the way in this Android upgrade cycle.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Samsung can — and should — do better. Particularly for a company of its size and with its immense financial and engineering-related resources, delivering updates to people three to five months late (even now, with the benefits of Google’s recent Project Treble Android upgrade processing improvements in place) comes down to one thing and one thing only: priorities.

OnePlus

JR/Google

• Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagships: 33 days (55/60 points)
• Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagship: Still waiting (0/30 points)
• Communication: Mediocre (5/10 points)

After a solid three-year streak of holding the second-place spot and steadily increasing its performance with Android upgrades, OnePlus has fallen hard with its Android 11 rollout. The company actually did pretty well with its current flagship phones, the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro, but it completely dropped the ball with its previous-gen flagship — the OnePlus 7T, which still hasn’t gotten the update as of this writing — and that was enough to bring down its score considerably.

Also not helping is the fact that OnePlus never does a heck of a lot in terms of communication with customers about its progress. The first official peep from the company came in January, when it posted a message in its forums noting that it had run into a “data decryption issue” with the OnePlus 7T phone and consequently was running later than it had anticipated with that device’s Android 11 delivery. That four-months-late acknowledgment is better than nothing, of course — and it’s the reason the company got a five-point communication score instead of a flat zero — but it isn’t even close to enough.

I can only hope that this stumble was a genuine fluke and that OnePlus will get back on track with Android 12 later this year. After seeing the company go from a 65% D score with Android 8 to a 74% C with Android 9 and then a pretty-darn-good 85% B with Android 10, it’d be a real shame to see subpar scores become its norm again.

NEXT PAGE: The Hall of Shame “F” club — and a few important footnotes

LG

JR

• Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagship: 172 days (37/60 points)
• Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagship: Still waiting (0/30 points)
• Communication: Poor (0/10 points)

I’ll be honest: I’ve mostly run out of things to say about LG at this point. The company has been a blemish on this analysis since pretty much the start — and after a tiny shred of improvement with last year’s Android upgrade cycle (one that was enough to get it a record-setting 43% F score — yay?), LG is back to its usual habit of doing next to nothing for the people who shell out hundreds of dollars for its devices.

Between the once-flagship-level G line and the maybe-sorta-kinda alternate flagship V line, it’s tough to say for sure which devices are even LG’s flagship phones these days, but I’m going ahead and counting the company’s single U.S. rollout of Android 11 to its LG V60 ThinQ 5G (gesundheit!) as something. That upgrade happened a mere matter of days ago, though, right before the six-month mark, so it isn’t exactly a celebration-worthy win.

Beyond that, the rest of the company’s U.S. handsets are still waiting, with nary a peep about any plans or timing expectations moving forward. (And all of that, mind you, is despite the company’s comical boasting about its groundbreaking innovations in Android upgrade management a couple years back. Um, right, y’all.)

I’ll repeat my now-annual assessment of the situation: If you buy a phone from LG, you’re accepting the fact that you’ll be waiting in the dark — likely for a very long time — to see if or when you’ll ever get any future updates. So you’d better make sure you’re okay with that black hole before shelling out your hard-earned money.

Speaking of which…

Motorola (Lenovo)

JR/Google

• Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagship: Still waiting (0/60 points)
• Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagship: Still waiting (0/30 points)
• Communication: Poor (3/10 points)

Oh, Moto. Moto, Moto, Moto. The company that was once a shining high point of the Android upgrade picture continues to be consistent in its disappointment when it comes to post-sales software support today. As of this moment, Motorola has yet to roll out a single Android 11 upgrade to any phone in the U.S., where this analysis of ours is focused.

It did put out a list of phones it planned to update in late December, just before the holidays and more than three months after Android 11’s arrival — albeit with no specific timing info or meaningful promises attached. So that’s something, in terms of communication, but just barely.

It’s enough to get Motorola a few points, though, leading to that appropriately pitiful-looking 3% F score. So…yeah: Go team?

Wait — what about everyone else?

Notice any names missing from this list? For the first time ever, I’ve omitted HTC — once the most prominent and enthusiast-beloved company within the Android ecosystem — from this analysis. After years of exemplary software support, HTC had fallen pretty hard as of late, earning an unfortunate 0% F grade in last year’s report card and similarly sad F scores in the couple years before that.

Well, we’ve reached a point now where HTC is barely even putting out new phones anymore — certainly not flagship-level devices. And so there’s really nothing to assess. If HTC comes back around and attempts to get in the game again at any point, I’ll eagerly add it back into the list for inclusion.

And then there’s Sony — a company a random reader will ask me about on occasion but that just doesn’t make sense to include in this list right now. Sony has never had much of a meaningful presence in the U.S. smartphone market (which is a shame, really — but that’s another story for another time), and in recent years, its role has dropped from “barely anything” to “virtually nothing.”

I can’t even begin to make head or tails of Sony’s convoluted, confusingly named phone lineup anymore, but the company sent its first Android 11 upgrade out in mid-December — just over three months after the software’s release — and then sent updates to a handful of other devices about a month after that. Its communication efforts are consistently better than most, too. It certainly wouldn’t be topping the list if it were included in this analysis, but it’d be a much-needed extra addition to the middle-of-the-pack, C-range section and something to better take us from our first-place A ranking to the second-place D-level score.

And then there’s Nokia. That company has an extremely limited presence in the U.S., but it’s generally done a solid job of keeping its phones updated with both major and minor OS releases and with monthly security patches since it entered the Android arena a handful of years back. At least, that was the case — up until now.

Despite the fact that Nokia now makes all of its phones part of Android One — a Google-run program that includes an assurance of reasonably timely (if not Pixel-level) ongoing software updates — the company mostly dropped the ball this upgrade cycle, with a single sluggish update just weeks ago and the rest of its rollouts curiously still pending. Especially with the Android One connection, that raises some tricky questions not only about what’s happening within Nokia itself but also what’s happening with the state of that once-reliable Google-associated program.

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In detail: How these grades were calculated

This report card follows the same grading system used with previous years’ analyses — which features precise and clearly defined standards designed to weigh performance for both current and previous-generation flagship phones along with a company’s communication efforts, all in a consistent manner.

Each manufacturer’s overall grade is based on the following formula, with final scores being rounded up or down to the nearest full integer:

• 60% of grade: Length of time for upgrade to reach current flagship phone(s)
• 30% of grade: Length of time for upgrade to reach previous-gen flagship phone(s)
• 10% of grade: Overall communication with customers throughout the upgrade process

Upgrade timing often varies wildly from one country or carrier to the next, so in order to create a consistent standard for scoring, I’ve focused this analysis on when Android 11 first reached a flagship model that’s readily available in the U.S. — either a carrier-connected model or an unlocked version of the phone, if such a product is sold by the manufacturer and readily available to U.S. customers — in a public, official, and not opt-in-beta-oriented over-the-air rollout.

(To be clear, I’m not counting being able to import an international version of a phone from eBay or from some random seller on Amazon as being “readily available to U.S. customers.” For the purposes of creating a reasonable and consistent standard for this analysis, a phone has to be sold in the U.S. in some official capacity in order to be considered a “U.S. model” of a device. I also don’t include Android One devices as part of this analysis, as (a) they’re part of a separate program that has contract-based requirements for upgrade delivery timing — at least in theory — and (b) they rely on Google’s Android software instead of a company’s own take on the operating system. Consequently, those devices are anomalies in a company’s broader profile; they exist in a category of their own and aren’t indicative of a device-maker’s upgrade behavior with its own self-controlled flagships.)

By looking at the time to Android 11’s first appearance (via an over-the-air rollout) on a device in the U.S., we’re measuring how quickly a typical U.S. device-owner could realistically get the software in a normal situation. And since we’re looking at the first appearance, in any unlocked or carrier-connected phone, we’re eliminating any carrier-specific delays from the equation and focusing purely on the soonest possible window you could receive an update from any given manufacturer in this country. We’re also eliminating the PR-focused silliness of a manufacturer rushing to roll out a small-scale upgrade in somewhere like Lithuania just so they can put out a press release touting that they were “FIRST,” when the practical implication of such a rollout is basically just a rounding error. I chose to focus on the U.S. specifically because that’s where this publication (and this person writing this right now — hi!) is based, but this same analysis could be done using any country as its basis, of course, and the results would vary accordingly.

All measurements start from the day Android 11 was released into the Android Open Source Project: September 8, 2020, which is when the final raw OS code finished uploading and became available to manufacturers.

The following scale determined each manufacturer’s subscores for upgrade timeliness:

• 1-14 days to first U.S. rollout = A+ (100)
• 15-30 days to first U.S. rollout = A (96)
• 31-45 days to first U.S. rollout = A- (92)
• 46-60 days to first U.S. rollout = B+ (89)
• 61-75 days to first U.S. rollout = B (86)
• 76-90 days to first U.S. rollout = B- (82)
• 91-105 days to first U.S. rollout = C+ (79)
• 106-120 days to first U.S. rollout = C (76)
• 121-135 days to first U.S. rollout = C- (72)
• 136-150 days to first U.S. rollout = D+ (69)
• 151-165 days to first U.S. rollout = D (66)
• 166-180 days to first U.S. rollout = D- (62)
• More than 180 days to first U.S. rollout (and thus no upgrade activity within the six-month window) = F (0)

There’s just one asterisk: If a manufacturer outright abandons any U.S.-relevant models of a device, its score defaults to zero for that specific category. Within that category (be it current or previous-gen flagship), such behavior is an indication that the manufacturer in question could not be trusted to honor its commitment and provide an upgrade. This adjustment allows the score to better reflect that reality. (No such adjustments were made this year, though there have been instances where it’s happened in the past.)

Last but not least, this analysis focuses on manufacturers selling flagship phones that are relevant and in some way significant to the U.S. market and/or the Android enthusiast community. That, as I alluded to above, is why someone like Sony is no longer part of the primary analysis — and why companies like Xiaomi and Huawei are not presently part of this picture, despite their relevance in other parts of the world. Considering the performance of players in a market such as China would certainly be interesting, but it’d be a completely different and totally separate analysis, and it’s beyond the scope of what we’re considering in this one report.

Aside from the companies included here, most players are either still relatively insignificant in the U.S. market or have focused their efforts more on the budget realm in the States so far — and thus don’t make sense, at least as of now, to include in this specific-sample-oriented and flagship-focused breakdown.