[andreamazz]

What do you mean by lack of retro compatibility? You can still ship apps that target ios6, you have runtime checks for APIs that are missing in one version, the IDE suggests what is available or not.

The major versions (and minors) are thoroughly documented in API diffs, the IDE suggests what to modify according to your platform target.

The review guidelines are basically changing for the major versions, accordingly to the new tech introduced, and most of them are dictated by common sense. If something goes awry the review team is available to discuss with you. Good luck getting an Android app reinstated if it is taken down.

The certificates are a pain in the ass, no way around that, but the rest of the platform makes up for this, the tools and language(s) are way easier to use.

[vetinari]

I have an iPhone 3G in the drawer, as an emergency phone.

The amount of apps, that this phone can download from App Store, whether running iOS 3 or 4, is exactly zero (yes, even those that were available in the past, cannot be downloaded).

My brother has for exact the same purpose the original HTC G1, running Android 1.6. That phone can download every single app from the Play Store, that was made available when the phone was supported.

[qq66]

If you're using it as an emergency phone, do you really need to install apps? Apple has taken the position that the older phones are not worth the trouble it takes to support them. The numbers seem to bear out this decision -- most in-market iPhones seem to be 4S and newer, and people upgrade their iPhones almost immediately when the new OS is released (this I can't understand at all, the new OSes frequently break things, and I always wait a few months to update).

[vetinari]

Background: I needed to sync the contacts with Google. Meanwhile, Google disabled the ActiveSync support, the phone was reset, and I was looking for some app to do that. In the past, there were apps capable of doing so, but now, they were unavailable. Add to that inability to side-load the apps..

Regarding the retro-compatibility:

Nobody supports Android 1.x either. However, in the past, developers did upload their apps that did work on these devices. So why the users shouldn't be able to download these old versions?

And that's the difference. Apple actively removed old packages from the store, while Google just left them there. Just this alone makes the old android devices more useful.

[ianlevesque]

You are comparing two phones that combined have less than a fraction of one percent of the installed base.

[vetinari]

So what? Is it ok to just trow them into garbage then?

You can still use them for calls and messages. You can still use one of them for apps, that were developed for this device.

[marrs]

The parent is probably too young to remember a time when you could buy a device expecting to keep it for the rest of your life, or maybe even pass on to your children.