2 years is whats pushed by the manufacturers. There’s basically no credible reason you phone should stop being supported at the 2 year mark.
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I don’t, I generally plan to hold on to my phone as long as I use a PC, so I would expect updates for 3 years at the minimum. My Sony Xperia loses its support just before the Android pie update is released which peeves me a little, if I am going to spend more than $800CAD on my device, I expect to get some actual use out of it.
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That’s only for android versions most of the time, though. Security updates tend to be longer, like I said earlier.
If you think about it, it makes sense. Most PC’s don’t see more than two OS major updates (XP > 7, 7>10)
Also, for people on contracts, 2 years is usually when people upgrade (The majority in the US, anyway) So it’s most definitely influenced by that.
Should be 2 years from them stopping sales imo
Yeah, that’s a thing here, too.
I had two year contracts on the first 3 Android phones I had: HTC Wildfire, Sony Xperia S, and HTC One M8. The first two were painfully slow by the end of the contract. The One M8 was usable for just under 3 years, but a bit horrible, and by that point I flashed it with the GPe ROM to get some newer features (Had to pay to get the bootloader unlocked).
I bought the OnePlus 5 when it came out in June 2017, and got a rolling monthly contract. It hasn’t had anywhere near the same performance degredation that the older phones saw (if anything, it feels faster). The hardware is solid at this point. Only thing holding it back is software.
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3 years is the maximum i know of from google.
I’m still kinda for locking the play store unless OEMs provide security updates
They basically do this. They have the 90 window for security updates. The problem is you hit 2 years and the phones are no longer supported.
They’ve tried to make changes so parts can be updated via the store, but you still miss all the firmware blobs which are dropped by the chip companies as well.
So OEMs are the problem then, not android.
What is the solution here?
Should google force OEMs to update if they want access to gsuite apps and play store?
What happens then when the OEM does not update, and the user is locked out of the playstore on their device, who gets the blame, google or the OEM?
Google is definitely taking steps to reduce fragmentation
Certainly google has a lot of power to rectify this issue as android is completely reliant on the playstore in its current state.
However if they were to exercise that level of stranglehold over OEMs there might be an uproar that would spawn a new android app-store, something google wants to avoid at all cost.
In the end, google’s end game is having as many devices as possible with gsuite and playstore installed.
While that might improve phones actually getting any updates, that doesn’t fix the 2 year end of life.
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How does one rectify that?
Does that responsibility even reasonably lie with google at all in the first place?
They are the only ones who can force people to support things so yes.
Customers will not buy from that oem again
They stand to gain nothing from that, except getting OEMs to turn on them.
The problem this cases as well is while you might have security updates. There are phones for sale today which don’t have the latest android version.
Compare Android to iOS
That last one is a killer. 75% of all iOS devices, all of them. Are on iOS 12.
They could stop bending over for Qualcomm for a start. Google rule over basically all of Android and for some reason they can get chip makers to do more?
And how is it that manufacturers are even allowed to release out of date phones?
Or they will buy a new device from that very same OEM.
WTF other OS can they go to? So its basically a monopoly since ios is apple only.
doubt, could happen but doubt and then the OEM gets $$$ from the new sale so win win
What kind of regulation do you want?
It’s an open source platform after all, manufactures have no obligation to give you any updates.
Oh I don’t care personally. They can do what they like, but that’s the problem with android, which is the point of this thread.
There is a moral issue potentially though, selling vulnerable phones you could probably argue a case if someones phone was hacked because of that.