iOS is more stable than Android. Android’s open nature is a blessing and a curse, leading to a system that is much less stable.That’s what we hear at least, right? One study calls those assumptions into question, finding that iOS is more crash-prone than Android.
Crittercism, a mobile app monitoring company, compiled crash data for 214 million app launches from November and December 2011 from apps that use its service. The study broke out apps for iOS and Android into quartiles, comparing the two platforms against each other in each quartile. It found that the best Android apps (i.e. the ones that crashed the least) crashed about a third as often as the best iOS apps. Both rates were below 1%, so the differences actually weren’t too great. Android apps crashed at a rate of 0.15% of app launches, while iOS apps crashed during 0.51% of app launches.
The company also released crash data for the period of December 1 through December 15, breaking down the statistics into a normalized data set to compare the percentage of crashes for which each operating system, by version, was responsible. iOS was the most crash-prone, accounting for 28.64% of all crashes.
I imagine that a statistician, or Kosmo, could have a field day with these numbers. For example, the study, by necessity, only included phones that utilized Crittercism’s monitoring service. What if that service introduced crashing issues that victimized iOS more than Android?
At the very least, though, the numbers should at least cause us to question the conventional wisdom that iOS is more stable than Android. I can only compare my Android phone with my iPad. If I think about it, my Android phone may be more frustration-inducing for other reasons, but apps rarely crash on it. My iPad, on the other hand, has had apps crash more frequently. What has been your experience?
Do iOS Apps Crash More Than Android Apps? A Data Dive | Forbes [via Technologizer]
Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers says:
“I imagine that a statistician, or Kosmo, could have a field day with these numbers. For example, the study, by necessity, only included phones that utilized Crittercism’s monitoring service. What if that service introduced crashing issues that victimized iOS more than Android?”
Yeah, wouldn’t that suck?
Personally, I rarely have an app “crash” on my Palm Pre (WebOS), but sometimes apps will stop refreshing the data (i.e. Facebook and Twitter not getting updated) and I end up killing the app and relaunching – bu8t I assume this wouldn’t be logged as an adverse event by Crittercism?
February 14, 2012 — 9:10 am
Evan Kline says:
Good question. That highlights another flaw or problem with this story – we don’t know the criteria that Crittercism uses.
February 15, 2012 — 9:31 am
Sarah says:
My iPhone crashes way more than my xoom (3.2)
February 17, 2012 — 2:58 am
saintsatinstain says:
I did an unscientific study among my kith and kin, 55 of them. I am the family geek though among the oldest, 70, and I am the one they call for help with their Linux, including Android, Macs, and Windows problems. The iOS devices had more crashes than the Android devices, about 18 percent more. I was surprised because I have recommended my tech ignorant friends and family get iOS devices, though I dont like them, because they are good for beginners. I dont do that automatically anymore.
March 1, 2013 — 10:15 pm
Evan Kline says:
That’s quite the sample size. Have you always been into tech? If so, you’ve sure seen many changes over the years.
March 2, 2013 — 6:58 am