Android 11 Still Powers 10x More Devices Than Android 17

Despite being one of the oldest Android versions still in use, Android 10 dominates this year's Android 17 ten-to-one. Android Dev Summit data reviewed by the German media outlet Heise.de reveals that even though mainstream Android users have had nearly five months to install the new OS, this edition is the least popular of its kind.

The data reflects devices that connect to the Google Play Store at least once over a seven-day period. It doesn't count every Android phone ever sold, so it's a stronger estimate of active use. (We're sure plenty of older Android editions sit on still-older phones in basements and attics everywhere.)

Here's the distribution, in descending order:

• Android 17 — 1.0%

• Android 16 — 25.4%

• Android 15 — 14.7%

• Android 14 — 15.3%

• Android 13 — 11.8%

• Android 12 — 9.6%

• Android 11 — 10.5%

Android 11 was publicly released on September 8, 2020. Google stopped supporting it in February 2024, with three successors already out and another on its way. Google Play services can still throw Android 11 some very important security updates here and there, but that's about it; the OS doesn't get the latest Android features.

Because Apple's iOS is exclusively for devices Apple manufactures, iPhone users can upgrade to the newest version of iOS relatively quickly. Android doesn't work this way. The Android ecosystem is highly fragmented, and Google has to push updates to individual manufacturers, who are responsible for ensuring the OS works well across many devices in different formats. One example is Samsung's One UI 9 , which stacks on top of Android 17 and works specifically on Samsung phones.

This could help explain why Android 17 isn't very popular yet. Still, some users might genuinely prefer older Android versions to this year's release, which wasn't particularly impressive on device families like Google's own Pixel.