Google has published its annual 0-day vulnerability report, presenting in-the-wild exploitation stats from 2022 and highlighting a long-standing problem in the Android platform that elevates the value and use of disclosed flaws for extended periods.
Part of it is also partly down to users just ignoring updates. I know people who complain about getting monthly updates let alone weekly. Another part (from experience) is also likely to be internal beurocracy where things just take ages because there’s so many unnecessary stages to go through before a release.
Patch updates really should be auto install by default for those users (but still let users opt out manually through settings if they want). Probably on home WiFi and while charging, just like Google Play does by default.
With A/B devices, there’s no reason not to. It’s completely invisible to the user, and takes effect next time they reboot or run out of battery. Just needs maybe a single notification when it’s all done to tell the user to reboot when it’s convenient for them, or reboot overnight when the device is idle and charging. Completely transparent.
Part of it is also partly down to users just ignoring updates. I know people who complain about getting monthly updates let alone weekly. Another part (from experience) is also likely to be internal beurocracy where things just take ages because there’s so many unnecessary stages to go through before a release.
This. I think they looked at the numbers and the vast majority of users never install updates.
When my wife used iPhone she purposely avoided installing updates because it might change how the phone works and slow it down.
I replaced that phone with a TCL and it gets zero updates. So she’s happy.
Patch updates really should be auto install by default for those users (but still let users opt out manually through settings if they want). Probably on home WiFi and while charging, just like Google Play does by default.
With A/B devices, there’s no reason not to. It’s completely invisible to the user, and takes effect next time they reboot or run out of battery. Just needs maybe a single notification when it’s all done to tell the user to reboot when it’s convenient for them, or reboot overnight when the device is idle and charging. Completely transparent.
The problem is, many popular devices still don’t have A/B partitions - Samsung being one of them.
I’m not sure even if the S24 / Fold 5 have it, haven’t heard anyone mention anything about this yet.