We asked, you told us: Your favorite ever Android release is changing

With a major new Android release in Android 9.0 Pie starting to hit smartphones, with all the fresh new features and tweaks, we wanted to know which Android release was your favorite ever.

It’s not an easy question because we all know the latest release is the one with the most features, most refined and balanced, and tweaked. In ten years time, we won’t remember how great Android Pie was because we’ll be on Android 19.0 Zesty Orange, with a phone sporting 17 lenses, a femtoLED screen, and only needing a light breeze to stay charged for six weeks. And, of course, that’ll be the best ever. But will it be your favorite?

Given how hard it is to remember anything at all really, it’s only the very dedicated who do recall the big leaps and important moments in Android. But they did matter. Some of them were huge shifts in the Android way of life, and gave us big changes to work with on our phones.

With everything happening at IFA we kept this giant poll just on the website, where around 2.5k votes were polled. Here’s how you voted:

What’s your favorite Android version of all time?

It’s a win for the latest and greatest. Oreo was the winner on the day, managing just over a quarter of the vote at 26 percent, and then a very healthy 23 percent of you voted for Android 9.0 Pie. That’s interesting given it’s still only available on very select devices, although more devices are getting Pie each week. The solid numbers for Lollipop, KitKat, and Marshmallow, despite being well behind us now, tells a story too in how important they were to Android users at the time, and how fondly you look back at them. Let’s look at that next.

(We bundled up all the results with 1 percent or less of the vote just to make the pie chart up above legible – full numbers are on the original poll if you want to look).

What you said:

And while we did want to know what the poll numbers would be, the really interesting aspects were the comments explaining your votes. This is one that you sort of need to justify in some way, especially if you weren’t part of the 49 percent who voted for the two most current Android OS versions.

Here’s a selection of some ot the things you said, as you entered your votes or commented on across our social media:

• I picked Lollipop just because that’s the point when the UI finally started to feel modern and fresh.
• I have to say Ice Cream Sandwich, it was the start of modern Android in my opinion.
• Android Lollipop. Because it kickstarted material design and got Google serious about design… and white space.
• KitKat (?) because it was damn light and stable. Super well optimised and had a good dark theme.
• Lollipop obviously, since it was revolutionary not just evolutionary.
• Lollipop – it changed everything.
• It’s always improving. The current one is better than the previous one and the next one will be even better. It’s not even up for discussion.

Thanks again to everyone who voted, and for all your comments and thoughts. If you want to talk about the outcome of the poll, the comment section below is the place for it. Meanwhile, the IFA madness continues, so stay tuned as our team reports on everything worth knowing about from the event!