Tech

Which Android smartphones get updated the fastest and crash the least?

There are a lot of different Android smartphones out there from dozens of different vendors. How do you pick the best? How about looking at how rapidly they get updated and how often they crash?

Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor Aug. 16, 2016 at 8:00 a.m. PT

What's the best Android smartphone?

That's a question I get asked a lot, and to be honest there's no real answer because what I value in a handset might be wildly different to what's important to you. For me, it might be battery life (it's almost always battery life for me), but to you, weight or screen size or even the bundled software might be important.

What we can all agree on is that when it comes to devices, there are two things that are really important, and those things are getting updates, and how often the device crashes. And to help us find out which Android smartphones get updated most rapidly and which crash the most often, Apteligent, a leader in user-centered mobile app metrics, has released a report highlighting this information.

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So, let's begin with which smartphones get updated the fastest. After crunching the numbers, and excluding Nexus devices since Google sends updates directly to these devices, the report says that in the US, it's Motorola that pushes out the updates the fastest, taking about two months to begin pushing Android 6.0 Marshmallow to compatible devices. Compare this to Samsung and Sony, who waited over 5 months before releasing the update to compatible devices.

So what about crash rates? To determine which manufacturer has the lowest overall crash rate, Apteligent analyzed only apps that have over half a million app loads a day, as these apps tend to have low crash rates and are highly optimized. The report claims that Sony and Motorola had the lowest crash rates, with HTC and Samsung following close behind.

Which Android smartphones get updated the fastest and crash the least?

So, given these two pieces of information, what the best smartphone out there? Here's what the report has to say:

"Based on OS updates and crash rates alone, the next HTC Nexus device might be worth waiting for. If you'd like to be one of the first users of Android 7.0 Nougat, LG's V20 is also a safe bet. LG has a history of getting OS releases out the door quickly and has an average crash rate. If you'd like to optimize for stability and update speed, then the Motorola Moto Z and Moto Z Force is a great choice. The Z series is Motorola's flagship line and will receive the Android 7.0 Nougat update the quickest."