Study Reveals That iOS Apps Crash More Frequently Than Android

According to research carried out by mobile app monitoring company Crittercism, iOS apps crash on a more frequent basis than those of its Google-created Android counterpart.

Having conducted the study during the course of the first two weeks of December, the results also highlights iOS 5.0.1 – Apple’s most recent iteration – as the most culpable, with 28.46% of all crashes attributable to that specific firmware version. In its defense though, it’s a relatively new revision, having only been released in November to fix an array of issues prevalent in the first end-user release.



The newness of 5.0.1 could also mean that a month later – when the research was gathered – many app devs hadn’t gotten around to properly updating apps for seamless compatibility with the updated iOS release.

The test was pretty thorough, with 23 different versions of iOS and 33 different Android versions covered in total. The emerging pattern seems to show that iOS 5 aside, older versions of the fruit company’s closed-source mobile software account for a huge chunk of the app-crashing total. iOS 4.2.1 was accountable for just over 12% of crashes, iOS 4.3.3 was responsible for 10.66% and iOS 4.1 had 8.24%.

The data, which tracked the use of over 214 million apps between November and December 2011, pitches iOS apps as at higher risk of crashing across all quartiles:



This second chart illustrates the percentage of app crashes across all Android and iOS versions covered in the research:



The results, whilst maybe surprising to some, once again raise the debate of Apple’s often slow response to iOS flaws. Although the app developers themselves may share some of the collective blame, the Cupertino-based company has yet to fix the battery issues plaguing many iPhone 4S users – all of whom would have paid good money to own the handset in the first place.



With Android seemingly unable to keep out of the headlines reporting of malware attacks, one may have expected the Big G’s mobile OS to be the least reliable, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Having used both on a number of different devices, I certainly wouldn’t have anticipated these results, but with such extensive research, there can be no arguments.

What do you guys think – surprising? Or an affirmation of your suspicions?

Source - Redmond Pie - Study Reveals That iOS Apps Crash More Frequently Than Android

Man, I been saying that Opera/Dolphin/Safari crash way more for me on iPhone than they ever did on android. And now that I jailbroke its even worse, like 5 random reboots a day, and about 5 forced reboots cause !! freezes up, gotta fix that !! this weekend, went tweak crazy

iOS 5 has been pretty unst@ble for me. It's hard to have long conversations with people because the Phone Call acts as an App and will randomly shut down ending the call. It's maddening.

Damn, even when my phone freezes when Im on a call it still continues with the call. Cant hangup though

i would never have guessed this... i thougt apple gives devs the opportunity to develop for the new os months before the update is released

!!s weird. I feel like I should go ahead and turn my phone into Apple, but I don't feel like starting from scratch again when I'm about to cop this Note in May.

pretty sure they do, but its not just third party apps, safari crashes way more on my 4S than Browser on my HD2 with ICS

That !! is weird.

Why would you have to start from scratch?

Synced Spotify Playlists in Offline Mode
Uploaded MP3s
Ringtones
Photos
Apps

all of those things that aren't 100% restored with a backup. It's annoying and I don't really have the time to sit there and re-sync which is probably why I haven't jailbroken it since early version 4.

I'm hoping this iCloud backup !! works, gonna try it out tomorrow...

it will restore pretty much everything. Have to re-sync music and ringtones from iTunes though. Don't know about Spotfly, but it backed up all my stuff in my Napster App.

Since I updated my iPad 1 to 5.0.1, safari crashes a lot and ive had a few freezes/resprings
I just[..]umed it was more prone to crashes due to jailbreak, but I guess not

damn my wp7 has ony crashed like 3 times since buying it almost a years ago

Infinity blade crashes more On the android

He's avoiding the thread

This is a pretty surprising study to me, the only two apps that I've had crash on me were Twitter and Safari/Perfect Browser...

This is definitely not a good look in general for Apple, so if it IS true then I fully expect more reports of this nature to come out...

Hafestos is really the only person to report excessive amounts of crashing and phone failures I've seen from any forum, including those who "tried the iPhone" coming from Android.

Will wait on more reports in the future.

iOS 5 hasn't exactly been the best OS update though (overall)...

I was on 4.2.1, never updated. It ran fine, occasional crash now and then, but overall st@ble.
Updated because a few new games I wanted required 4.3 or higher. Updated, got all hyped to play gta3, batman, a few others.. Those crash like crazy, I gave up trying to play thise on the iPad 1.

My safari crashes a lot, even just browsing BX or something. Embedded videos, half the time Im getting just black screen with audio and gotta go to YouTube to watch the vids.

Never had those issues before updating

iOS 5.0.1 cut my battery life in half.

!!ing garbage[..] update.

if its true then damn IOS lost cus I get crashes all the time on android apps

haha Im still running 4.0.1 b/c I KNEW 5 was gonna be some garbage.

But yea .. after a good year on my iPhone I was surprised that apps would !! so much, I always thought of the smoothness with which the apps run as apples biggest advantage... I'm not as impressed anymore tbh