What Android version is currently installed on your phone? [Poll]

Officially, 14 public Android builds have been made available by Google. In an ideal world, your device would have the latest stable Android version. However, whether it’s dubious OEM promises, slow rollouts, or just neglect from brands, the reality is that there is a disparity between devices.

The lastest distribution figures put Android 13 as active on just 15% of all active devices. Android 11 was the latest operating system version found on most hardware. It accounted for 23.1% of global devices as of June 2023. One obvious omission from the data is Android 14. It wasn’t released until October 2023.

All of this data was derived from Android Studio and doesn’t paint a healthy picture of Android’s poor update image. Most OEMs are slow at pushing the most recent Android versions, with long wait times to get anywhere close to Google’s platform update program.

Because you’re not getting the latest Android build on your phone, you miss out on lots of functionality, enhanced privacy functionality, plus visual overhauls. The jump between Android 11 and Android 12 on Pixel was a major switch for the operating system. We’ve seen more ROMs slowly build on these features since late 2021.

Over the past couple of years, things have improved. If you buy a flagship device from Google or Samsung, you get 7 years of OTA updates. For brands like OnePlus and Xiaomi, flagship phones are starting to ship with five years of updates, including four OS upgrades.

While this is great news, it only applies to recent hardware launches. If you have an older phone you will likely not benefit unless you are willing to upgrade your handset. Although third-party ROM usage is not as common today, it allows you to keep a phone running longer with newer Android builds tailored specifically to work with aging hardware.

Android 15 is on the not-too-distant horizon and will no doubt shake up the software distribution dashboard once again – if it hasn’t already thanks the Developer Preview and upcoming Public Beta program. This got us thinking. What Android version is currently running on your device? In the interest of fairness we’ll include all options up to Android KitKat, but be honest in your selection: