Re:There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use
by koffiezet on Thursday November 23, 2017 @10:43AM
(#15765685)
People make the mistake of thinking of Samsung as a single company - but it is not. Samsung's phone division is absolutely a hardware company, and so are the majority if their divisions. If they would be a software company, their Tizen OS would be in a lot better shape - but it's not.
And most Android manufacturers are hardware companies - their margins are too thin to support/maintain the software side of it. 90%+ of their R&D budget is hardware. It's the same as HP's computer division. No they are not a software company, they use MS Windows as the OS and make sure the correct drivers are present/integrated. This is exactly the same on Android. They buy off-the-shelve chipsets, integrate their drivers - which are developed by the chipset manufacturer - into Android, pour over some crappy GUI customization, in many cases developed by a 3rd party, and they're done.
Re:There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use
by jiggunjer on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @07:37AM
(#15694492)
My phone doesn't become obsolete because of that. It's because I'm not allowed to use many apps without updating them after a certain time. These newer versions are slower and use more resources. Even with regular updates my phone would be unusable after enough userland development.
Re:There are over a billion outdated Android devices in use
by gsich on Tuesday November 14, 2017 @02:06PM
(#15698133)
An unfixed remote code execution (lets say through the SSID, exaggerated example) doesn't make your device obsolete?
The software update case you wrote is a good example of planned (or accepted) obsolescence by the developer.
So if your (example) Samsung device gets updates for 2 years, then the planned obsolescence for that device is 2 years + a few months. The amount of months depends on the severity of the security issues discovered. Also, it may not be "planned" obsolescence, but it sure is "accepted" (from the vendors point) obsolescence. Which is even worse.
On a side note, as a customer I don't care about internal structures of companies. I want updates. If they can't deliver that, open source everything.