Study finds iPhone apps crash more than Android

A report from mobile app analysts Crittercism suggests that, contrary to the commonly held belief that Apple's iPhone runs apps more reliably, it's actually Android which features more stable applications.

Crittercism surveyed crash reports on both operating systems for fifteen days from the beginning of December 2011 including data from 23 versions of iOS and 33 versions of Android.

The biggest chunk of crash activity clocked in at 28.64 per cent for iOS 5.01.

No big deal in and of itself perhaps, but the survey goes on to show that many other versions of iOS have unfavourable results also – version 4.2.1 accounts for a not insubstantial 12.64 per cent, while 4.3.3 is at 10.66 per cent.

Overall the numbers show that iOS accounts for around 75 per cent of all crashes recorded by the survey.

It's also interesting that despite iOS being regarded as a non-fragmented platform compared to Android many people are still using older and out-of-date versions.

There is, of course, no need for this with the way in which Apple rolls out updates universally.

It comes down to individual user activity, lack of information or motivation to update might mean many users stay on old builds unnecessarily and this is sure to have an impact on compatibility and stability which would go some way to explaining these damning results. In other words, it's not Apple's fault.

Another factor is that the main offender was version 5.01. At the time of the survey this was a brand new release and an uncharacteristically buggy one at that, which means not only were there the expected kinks to iron out but a massive bundle of extra ones on top.

One of our main stumbling blocks with the results is also the short period of the survey time. We think a much longer period of analysis would be necessary to get an accurate view of things.

There are other rogue elements which need addressing too, as Electricpig points out:

‘Though overall Android apps appear to be more stable on average (Crittercism also compared by crashes to launches, not just crashes, removing the potential skew of more iPhones being tested), the ‘best' or most stable apps, those in the top quartile, for Android actually crashed more than those in the top quartile for iPhone.'

‘That suggests a level of polish is being applied to the very best iPhone apps that Android ones do not receive, but also that there's an awful lot of poorly coded iPhone apps lurking within the depths of the App Store too - even more than on the Android Market.'

Business tech analyst site Forbes also commented on what factors might cause these results, writer Tomio Geron wanted to establish why iOS apps crash so much.

‘This can be due to hardware issues, such as the use of location or GPS services or cameras; it could be due to the Internet connection, that is, how a phone connects to 3G or WiFi, or that the device is not connected to the Internet at a certain moment, or that something happens during the switch between 3G and WiFi. There could also be issues with language support on certain devices. There can also be memory problems if an app uses too much memory,' he said.

‘Problems can also occur with third-party services that developers use in their apps, from analytics to advertising systems. For example, there were reports that Apple's iAds system gave some developers problems if they did not adhere to certain standards,' added Geron.

Geron also focused in on version compatibility issues, that ever-present problem of user-error in not updating either the platform or the app regularly:

‘Developers also constantly create new updates to their apps to create new features or fix bugs. But again, people often don't update their apps-just as they don't update their operating system. (Android, unlike iOS, allows users to auto-update their apps, which can eliminate some of the problems.) So developers often test all previous versions of their apps with each version of the different operating systems.'

Crittercism CEO Andrew Levy noted that ‘the permutations go on forever.'