Not to most users. Most users have no idea about versions of operating systems on their phone.

They bought a phone, they _may_ know that it's an Android phone, or they may just know they bought a Samsung phone. They probably don't even think about it having an operating system as such - it's a phone, not a computer, as far as most people are concerned.

I believe first time smartphone users know/acknowledge that they are getting a form of computer of a higher order than other consumer electronics.

Actually, people don't even think about the operating system on their computer much. They're somewhat more conscious of it, but by and large, they buy a computer and use whatever OS happened to be on it. They'll upgrade their OS when they buy a new computer.

We've been repeating this line for a line time now, but I'm not completely sure it applies.

I used to work for a big computer manufacturer from China working on their website. I worked hand in hand with designers making intranet apps, product description pages, landing pages, e-commerce, etc. We used to think like that, that users don't know anything about computers, so we focused on values, aesthetics, obvious features and price when designing product and landing pages. But one day a VP of e-commerce dropped by and said that A/B testing was showing that landing pages with technical data like processor power, RAM, disk size were working better than bare shiny pages. It turns out users are becoming more tech savvy every day.

So from that day on, whenever I think "yeah but a common user wouldn't do that" I try to get some evidence to back it up. People adapt and always surprise us.

> But one day a VP of e-commerce dropped by and said that A/B testing was showing that landing pages with technical data like processor power, RAM, disk size were working better than bare shiny pages. It turns out users are becoming more tech savvy every day.

It would have been interesting to do further testing to determine whether a page with nonsense words that looked technical did as well as tech specs. There is indeed evidence that consumers _like_ tech specs, and especially they like _larger_ tech specs; hence the race to increase megapixel counts, even at the cost of quality, and AMD's "Pentium equivalent" numbers (at a time when the Athlon 64 did more work per cycle than the P4, AMD would give a number intended to compare to the P4, rather than the chip's actual frequency).

There is, however, very little evidence that the user has the first clue about what the numbers _mean_.

That really doesn't have anything to do with what I said. Whether users can or do understand technical details is orthogonal to whether they routinely think about or change operating systems and for that matter, swap other major "components", other than through purchase of a whole new computer. Usually, they do not.

Not my mother-in-law. She doesn't really understand what an OS is, but she understands a change in user interface.

She knows enough that an upgrade in operating system will change enough that she'll be confused all over again and be frustrated trying to learn how to use her own computer, something she paid thousands of dollars for.

I believe she is still on vista, and won't upgrade because she knows how to use vista, and that was painful enough.

She is, however, the most computer unsavvy person I've ever met that actually uses a computer.

Let me introduce you to my dad. He still thinks the computer is the keyboard, and the big box is just the power supply and the Compact Disc player he plays music with.

He runs XP. He uses IE, Hotmail, Messenger and even figured out how to sign up for Facebook on his own. Way back when, he learned some Word and Excel to track his DVDs and write his memories. Sometimes I believe he is reasonably savy for an old, non-tech person.

Then I remember the time I moved his "internet" icon to a different spot on the desktop, and he freaked out because the computer didn't work anymore.

The "looking forward to" part is the problem. A simple OTA update that totals out the interface is not going to be a welcome thing unless your target audience is expecting the change.

Microsoft and Apple spend a lot of money and generate a lot of hype for their new OS changes. Google isn't really doing that expect in the tech community. Also, Microsoft (PC, trying on mobile) and Apple (PC and mobile) are the voice for the devices. Google is still in the OEM supplier stage and doesn't have the reach to the consumer level.

Google does reach the consumer with their Android apps, such as Gmail and Play (the app and entertainment store).

Not with their OS release for Andriod.

People -- including me -- get upset as hell when cable providers move channels around (I can't find CNN now, for example). And that's not really a UI change, either. The crappy cable guide UI generally remains the same. But now some of the "buttons" have been moved.

I would say your example is not analogous. To upgrade from XP to Vista, the user has to purchase Vista and go through the install process. To upgrade from 3.x to ICS, the user simply downloads an OTA update.

The upgrade to ICS can be done by casual users, who may not even know that they are upgrading to ICS, whereas the XP user is clearly making the decision to upgrade to a new OS.

To be fair, if you flash ICS over an older version, stock and unmodified, it does present the "Android is Upgrading" screen.

It'd be easy for Samsung to deploy a website and make a tour of ICS, and tout it as a fully fledged upgrade.

> Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

No. When someone upgrades to Vista, they go out and buy a Vista CD. When they upgrade to ICS, they just press 'yes' in the dialog asking if they want to upgrade (or in extreme cases, do nothing; a few Android vendors have at least occasionally pushed out upgrades which happen without user intervention).

> Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

From a technical point of view probably, but from a user point-of-view, if the update can be delivered OTA? That's more questionable.

Furthermore the difference between Ginger/TouchWiz and ICS is arguably far larger than that between XP and Vista (ignoring Vista being half-baked and half-broken on release).