New Phone Already Feeling Old? You Can Thank Android’s Short Manufacturing Cycle
We all know the feeling. A new Android handset starts to be rumored. Eventually pictures and FCC filings for the device begin to leak out. Based on speculation it is called the next big thing, and when it finally launches it sells out in mass quantitates. A few weeks later a new Android handset shows up at the rumor mill, and the cycle starts again. Without even owning an Android phone for more than a couple months we start questioning if we really got our money’s worth.
If you have experienced this situation, you are simply a victim of what a report at CNN is calling Android’s Law. As new iterations of the Android operating system are deployed, the manufacturing cycle of new smartphones featuring the OS becomes shorter. What once took a handset manufacture close to 10 months to accomplish is now being churned out at a rate closer to 7. That’s a shift from what was basically a year-long guarantee that something better wouldn’t come along, to a point where we might have six months at best to feel like the coolest kid on the block. With the large number of handsets announced at CES and even more coming at MWC, that life cycle could be getting even shorter.
But should this even matter? After all, the HTC EVO 4G launched last June on Sprint still stacks up pretty well to against the HTC Thunderbolt coming to Verizon later next month. The shorter life cycle also gives smaller companies such as ZTE and Huawei an opportunity to penetrate the Android smartphone market.
Does the shrinking lifespan of your mobile technology make you hesitant to purchase a new Android phone? Or does the great variety of choices make it an even better experience? Let us know in the poll below.
[polldaddy poll=4477339]
[via IntoMobile]