iOS Apps Found to Crash More Often Than Android Apps

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Posted February 5, 2012 at 1:51am by iClarified

iOS apps crash more often than Android apps with iOS 5.0.1 being the worst firmware for crashes, according to a Forbes report based on data from Crittercism.

The largest proportion of app crashes from both iOS and Android platforms were on iOS 5.01 with 28.64% of overall crashes (in a normalized data set). That makes sense since iOS 5 was still relatively new at that time and many apps still need to work out the kinks with the new OS. But there are also older iOS versions that have a significant proportion of app crashes. For example, iOS 4.2.10 had 12.64% of app crashes, iOS 4.3.3 had 10.66% and iOS 4.1 had 8.24%. One other point that this made clear to me is that many people apparently take their time updating their iPhone software or never update it at all.

It's unclear why iOS saw more crashes than Android; especially since Android is running on a wider variety of hardware and has released more versions of its operating system. According to the data, there were at least 23 different iOS operating systems on which apps had crashed and 33 Android operating systems on which apps had crashed. Crittercism CEO Andrew Levy said, "It can be a mix of both hardware and software issues that developers may or may not be responding to."

One possible explanation is that iOS developers can't fix bugs quickly due to Apple's approval process. Often it takes at least a week for an update to be approved. Even an emergency request takes about two days. This is often devastating for developers who rack up negative publicity as they wait for their update to go out to customers. With Android, developers can fix issues that come up and immediately seed the new version.

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iOS Apps Found to Crash More Often Than Android Apps

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this is.. - February 6, 2012 at 6:17pm

..bullshit . i have an android phone huawei ideos x5 ans honestly, it crashes way more often than my iPod Touch 4g iOS 5.0.1, and i'm not saying that iOS doesn't crash, of course it crashes sometimes, but seriosly , iOS crashes more often than Android? That i can say is bullshit man.

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Iskandar - February 6, 2012 at 5:06pm

Are you one of Apple staff? Take it positively bro. Ask Apple/developer to work harder. Wish all the best

Steve - February 6, 2012 at 7:15am

While of course I upgraded my iPad to 5.0.1 i wont do so with my iPhones, because of the crashes.. I also feel it has become more jerky on the graphics and generally slower. I felt 4.3.3 was the best !

xplode - February 5, 2012 at 8:31am

As few people said, jailbroken devices are not shown in the charts , also android custom roms are not shown too. Both have potential of decreasing stability. Also if you take a look, you will ask Why 5.0.1? The answer is because most of the iOS devices use it, you can take a note that 4.3.3 takes 10% of the chart too. It was the last untethered jailbroken build before Corona and Absynthe arrived. Also if you take a look iOS 4.2.10 - this is Verizon iPhone 4 users exclusively. In iOS5 there are no differences in the builds for CDMA and GSM iphones - all of them have same versions so if you summarize the users with 4.3.3 and with 4.2.10 you get approximately the users with 5.0.1. Similar is with android, the most used build in custom rom is android 2.3.4 and 2.3.5 - they both have high percent of crashes because most users have it and use it. Android 4.0.1 is beta they can not publish a beta version and compare. Also very few people use it. The person who made these charts have no knowledge whatsoever of phones, and mobile usage. The charts are highly inaccurate and the data is false!

zer0_design - February 5, 2012 at 7:08am

yes, true, especially when it comes to the high graphic game, the 3gs or lower oftenly crash :P but, for android, in my experience, the OS it self is way much oftenly crash than the iOS

shar - February 5, 2012 at 6:45am

dont know much about androids, but I do have a lot of crashes on some of my apps (not a jailbroken phone), sometimes it just gets on my nerves..... though with android devices variety being so much, I would expect much higher crash incidents.

Adcpolo - February 5, 2012 at 4:20am

Total BS! They have no way of knowing how many times an app crashed. Other than surveying which is a totally false analysis

Bob - February 5, 2012 at 7:07pm

Couldn't agree more. This is total trash. No way of knowing about all apps used by all people.

Timmy - February 5, 2012 at 3:32am

I do not accept this data at all. This does not take into account jailbroken devices, where the likelihood of a crash is greatly increased. If you look at 5.0.1, the firmware that is jailbreakable on every device it has the most crashes. This is not a coincidence. It crashes because its jailbroken. I don't wanna sound like I'm against jailbreaking, far from it. If I had it my way every device would be jailbroken, but the fact of the matter is that jailbroken devices crash alot more.

David - February 5, 2012 at 3:24am

This quote throws doubt on the credibility of the whole study: "One other point that this made clear to me is that many people apparently take their time updating their iPhone software or never update it at all." Both Apple as well as other app authors who track iOS versions indicate the exact opposite. For instance, just one month after iOS 5 was released, 40% were already on it. As of a month ago, only 0.6% of Android users were on the latest release (ICS).

Maded - February 5, 2012 at 2:45am

I deal with Tech support for a major carrier, and I can tell you straight up that whoever did this survey/study was smoking something pretty potent and/or employed by Google, lol. Probably both. 90% of calls that come in are for Android phones, and of those calls the majority are issues caused by Android apps crashing or their phones freezing. The iPhone calls? Mostly just people trying to activate the phone without using iTunes. Their figures are way off here.

Miguel - February 5, 2012 at 2:21am

"With Android, developers can fix issues that come up and immediately seed the new version." And you can quickly acquire a new virus in your phone too!!! Heheheheh