Germany wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of software updates

Re:Germany wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of softw... by gpm on Monday September 06, 2021 @07:54PM (#28439384)

Replying to myself here, one interesting result of the "security updates without any feature regressions" interpretation is that it would be a very strong disincentive to bundling software. You would want to let users install their own browser instead, so that every browser feature isn't a feature that you need to maintain. It seems like it could completely eliminate shipping with apps like Facebook pre-installed, because Facebook is never going to commit to not removing features.

It's probably not feasible with todays software ecosystem to actually create that constraint... but I still really like the idea.

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Re:Germany wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of softw... by ratww on Tuesday September 07, 2021 @04:01AM (#28442196)

I like the idea.

Often when apps like Facebook are bundled on lower-end Android phones, they are not uninstallable. This means they take internal memory and can't even be moved to SD cards, severely restricting the functionality and durability of those phones. The only way way to fix it is by rooting.

Non-essential or third party apps should be at least un-installable. I'd be ok with a law for that.

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