Android Circuit: iOS Smashes Android, Galaxy S6 Fails Samsung, BlackBerry Priv Reviewed

Taking a look back at seven days of news across the Android world, this week’s Android Circuit includes Samsung’s Galaxy J saving the mobile division, Google hunts bugs in the S6 Edge, the monthly security update from Mountain View, Marshmallow’s market share, reviews of the BlackBerry Priv, reasons to buy the Sony Xperia Z5, the best smartwatch for Android users, and the app that asks how high can you throw your phone?

Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many things that have happened around Android in the last week.

Samsung Galaxy S6 vs Galaxy S6 Edge (image: Ewan Spence)

Samsung’s Saviour Is Not The Galaxy S6

Which handset had the most impact in Samsung’s recent results? That the South Korean company arrested the seven-quarter run of falling profits was welcome, but with much of that turnaround coming from the display and semi-conductor business, what did the mobile division bring to the table? It certainly wasn’t the under performing Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, or the Note 5 or Edge Plus. Instead the big contributions came from a mid-range, mid-specced handset, the Galaxy J:

With weaker sales at the top end of its portfolio, Samsung is having to sell more handsets for less individual return to maintain its place in the market. There are fewer opportunities to lead the conversation and have an impact on the public perception of what a smartphone is if you are reliant on a mid-range handset to make up the numbers.

It also starts a worrying trend. If the flagship sales are falling, what can be done to turn them around? Samsung has spent most of 2015 trying to reverse the trends of 2014 which saw sales, revenue, and profit all slow down.

Calling Out Samsung’s Bugs

That wasn’t the only awkward story for Samsung this week, as Google’s Project Zero team decided to look at the Galaxy S6 Edge to find out how vulnerable it was to attack. Previously the team has looked at the Nexus devices, and now it has focused on an OEM. The results? Eleven vulnerabilities were found, and disclosed privately to Samsung. Eight have already been patched, with the final three expected to be addressed in November:

 A week of investigation showed that there are a number of weak points in the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. Over the course of a week, we found a total of 11 issues with a serious security impact. Several issues were found in device drivers and image processing, and there were also some logic issues in the device that were high impact and easy-to-exploit.

The majority of these issues were fixed on the device we tested via an OTA update within 90 days, though three lower-severity issues remain unfixed. It is promising that the highest severity issues were fixed and updated on-device in a reasonable time frame.

It’s an unusual step to call out a partner publicly, but the ‘happy resolution’ at the end of the blog post leads me to think that this is a ‘look, we can fix everything with monthly updates’ good news story to rebuild confidence in the Android brand.

Nexus 6P (image: Google PR)

Google’s Monthly Bug Hunting Results

Speaking of monthly updates, the latest Android update patches twenty-three bugs in Android. Forbes’ Thomas Fox-Brewster:

There’s another Stagefright vulnerability in town, but it’s not the scariest bug in the latest monthly Android update from Google, announced today. Seven other flaws in different software libraries are the most concerning, all allowing remote control execution, where hackers can send multimedia messages or emails to launch their attacks.

Android partners were alerted on October 5th to include these fixes with haste, while Google’s Nexus line up of developer-focuses smartphones were patched over the air as quickly as possible.

Android’s Internal Market Share

Staying with monthly updates, Google’s Android Developer Dashboard refreshed the current share of Android devices running various versions of the mobile operating system, A month after release, Android Marshmallow showed up with a 0.3% share – an improvement over Lollipop which took three months to appear on the dashboard.

It ask shows that Lollipop has finally broken the one-in-four mark a year after it was first released, with a share of 25.6 percent.

The dashboard is already showing the impact of Android Marshmallow. The 0.3 percent share of the market may be a small figure but the only Marshmallow devices so far are in Google’s own Nexus range of devices. The Nexus 5X and 6P are starting to ship to customers, while Marshmallow images for the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 7, Nexus 9 and the Nexus Player were made available on October 5th.

It’s a much stronger roll-out compared to Lollipop. Version five of Android was launched in November last year and it took another three months before it showed up in the developer dashboard. Google discounts any version of Android under 0.1% share from the dashboard, so Marshmallow has broken that barrier three times faster than Lollipop.

And if you want to put those shares in context, Apple posted details on the iOS 9 update rate. That updated operating system is now running on sixty-six percent of all compatible devices, smashing Marshmallow’s 0.3 percent.

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