Apps fail more on iPhone iOS and work better on Android!

February 19, 2021, by Santiago Comment

A “Crashed App” is a term widely used in English to define an application that has unexpectedly crashed while being used. In Spanish it is defined as “hung application” or “frozen”. In which operating system does this problem occur most often: Android or iOS? Where do applications stop working or stopping more frequently and suddenly or without warning?

In the past, Crittercism, a website that monitored app usage on more than 1 billion Android and iOS devices, reported that apps crash the most on iOS. That is, they hang, freeze or stop working more frequently on iPhone and iPad than on Android devices. The data with precision were captured in the infographic below.

Soon after, Blancco Technology Group also reported what “apps stop almost three times longer on iPhones than on Android devices«. Specifically, it reported that in 65% of iOS devices, apps stopped or closed unexpectedly, compared to 25% of Android devices that had the same problem.

At that time (2016), according to BTG, among the most unstable apps on iOS were Pokemon Go and Facebook Messenger, which froze 5% of the time, and Instagram and Snapchat with 14% and 12% respectively. However, it also reported that some Android apps had more serious problems, such as the IMS Service app that stopped unexpectedly by 32%. The contact book was less problematic, with 12% of hang ups.

According to BTG, one of the reasons why iOS is more unstable for apps is the frequency with which Apple updates this operating system, highlighting the increase in application crashes after each major iOS update. Here it should be added that Apple also offers more years of updates for its devices than what Android manufacturers offer.

AppleInsider indicates that there appears to be a clear correlation between iOS system updates and app crashes. The same website also states that due to the poor support for Android updates, developers have to keep running on older versions of the system, having less pressure to make changes to their applications. In other words, the good thing about having frequent and widespread updates on iOS also becomes a weak point for the stability of the apps, the antithesis of what happens on Android.