To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade

Taking a moment away from the more typical “tutorial” type articles, we’re going to spend a minute and address a common question most people ask…”should I upgrade my devices’ operating system?”  With iOS 5 hitting Apple devices recently and Android 4.0 (i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich) coming soon, this question is more relevant than ever.

The question always comes up…should I get the lastest version of my phones operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry OS, etc).  There is no simple answer but let’s look at a few questions to ask yourself before you make this decision.  First off, take a look at what the features are that you’re getting in the upgrade.  Often times the upgrades are marginal or impact aspects of the device that are irrelevant to you based on your usage.  In those cases, no big worries in not getting the upgrade.

The next question is…at what cost will I get the upgrade.  By this we mean what negative aspects are there in upgrading.  Again, this depends on the type of user you are.  If you’re someone that likes to tweak and mess with your phone (jailbreaking your iOS device or rooting your Droid) then you probably don’t want the latest version.  Typically, new versions are released to block users from doing things that the mother ship frowns upon.  For example, when the jailbreak method for the iPad 2 was finally released by hacker Comex, Apple immediately released an update to the operating system to block the jailbreak.  They added virutally nothing else other than the block and because it came out so quickly following the release of the jailbreak, the majority of iPad 2 users were left with an (as of yet) un-jailbreakable device.

The same holds true for Android.  While Google says it doesn’t take as active a role in trying to block rooting as Apple does against jailbreakers, new versions of Android are typically not compatible with current root method.  This means you have to wait until an enterprising hacker or software developer comes up with a new method and sometimes those new methods aren’t quite as simple as the older ways.  This also holds true for certain apps that, for example, allow you to turn a rooted device into a wifi hotspot.  These features may be disabled on a newer version.

It’s always nice to have the latest and greatest and sometimes the upgrades genuinely do warrant the drawbacks or sacrifices one must make.  All we suggest is to not take the idea of an upgrade as always being just that.  Quite often an upgrade is nothing but a downgrade.