The security patches in Android are arriving faster than ever before: Google, Nokia, and Sony are at the head

The fragmentation on Android is still an issue. Currently only 1 of every 10 devices have the latest version of the operating system, which amounts to almost a 90% of devices out of date. Apart from the Android versions, it is important to the topic of security patches, which allow the devices to improve their firmware without the need to switch to a new version of Android.

A study conducted by SRLabs, German team specialized in cyber-security, has put on the table is good news level of security patches. It has reduced the average number of days it takes for the manufacturers to distribute themhighlighting also what are the manufacturers that do it best in this field.

Google and Nokia, to the head with the security patches

SRLabs has done a research from 2018 until today, in order to discover what is the state of security patches on Android. In particular, they speak of the average number of days in 2018 in order to receive the security patch monthly was 44 days, while in 2020 is 38 days. This period includes since Google published the patch until the manufacturer integrates it into the firmware.

The data, although they may seem little at the level of days involving an improvement of 15% at the time of distribution of security patches according to the data of the germans, a figure quite good taking into account a period of two years and the huge fragmentation that there is in Android.

The company indicates that Google, Nokia and Sony were the major manufacturers, quick to integrate security patches in Androidwhile Xiaomi, HTC, and Vivo have been slower to add them to the firmware. In particular, Google, Nokia and Sony added immediately, while firms like Motorola, OnePlus, HTC or Xiaomi takes more than 1 month to implement them (on average). Good work on the part of Samsung, Huawei and LG, with an implementation average of the security patches in a period of about two weeks.

In the same way, interesting data point on the scatter of the patches depending on the version. As devices are getting new versions of Android, manufacturers prioritize the updates for these versions, leaving the terminals with versions of Android earlier patches oldest. Even so, the data improve on 2018.

Also important to see that manufacturers are jumping less implementations, having lowered the average number of patches missing from 0.7% to 0.3%. This does not mean that the manufacturers are jumping the patches, but that does not implement all functions of the same in the firmware. Manufacturers will no longer jump (both) all the news of the patches, having reduced thus the rate.

Via | ZDNet

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The security patches in Android are arriving faster than ever before: Google, Nokia, and Sony are at the head

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Xataka Android

by
Ricardo Aguilar

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