You're pointing out how ridiculous it is, but let me expand:

So, as an order of magnitude, the price asked by Qualcomm for extended support is 1M$. That's 10c/device. The VoLTE license costs more than that. The H264 license costs more than that.

Also Pixel makes Android, so surely, Android can't become incompatible with older hardware because of Android, or if it does, it's Google's own doing!

There is the question of security of binary blobs for which Google doesn't have the source code, ok!

Well let's see: - Billions (ok, maybe just hundreds of millions) of Mediatek devices have their bootrom "open". Should we stop upgrading those, because of physical access issue? - Everyone considers 2G utterly broken, allowing downgrading attacks, thus Google gives Android 12 the possibility to disable 2G. Yet, Google "refuses" devices launched with Android 11 Treble HALs, like devices launched with Snapdragon 888, to have this "disable 2g" [1] - Pixel 6 stayed 45 days on an """obsolete""" security patch

So, maybe we should stop saying that security is the alpha and omega, and all or nothing. It is important. Reducing our e-waste is more important.

[1] This is a weird thing, related to Treble, Google Requirement Freeze, and Vendor System Requirements, I can explain in details if anyone is interested

A sane architecture means support is much easier. I've used low power PCs that were more than one decade old, and I could still run the same well supported software as in a newly built machine.

Some regulation is needed to stop this madness. We don't have enough resources to let everyone trash their phones every three years. Rare earths are scarce, not to talk about all the junk going to landfills.

Had IBM been able to prevent it (and they did try with PS/2 and MCA when the courts failed), there wouldn't be PCs as we know it, rather like every other 16 bit computer of the time.

For example if a CPU instruction-level issue was discovered Fairphone would have no way to fix that without microcode updates. This means that a vendor can't guarantee security updates for longer than Qualcomm will offer low-level support. However the discovery of an explotable instruction 3 years after release is quite unlikely and as far as I am aware hasn't occured so presumably Google *could" continue updates in this case.

Of course there is still consumer expection issues. If phones are usually supported for 5 years even though they only promise 3 you might feel cheated if your particular model has to stop at 3.5 years.

There is also the option of ignoring the CPU vulnerability but continuing other security updates. However trying to explain this to users is incredibly difficult. Even if you can get their attention you have to explain the impact of being able to break out of the app sandbox to them.

I decided to take a risk with them and buy FP4 to support them.

I'll second the request for a source for this, $1M seems ridiculously low.

If you see the entire picture, it's the most expensive cost any department can ever present.

it is a "revenue-less $1M"! pure Career suicide.

Specially because marketing can't even use it. today only false-equality sells. Eco-thinking is so 90s.

This is a huge part of the reason why Androids depreciate so much faster on the used market, if you compare the Galaxy S20 to the even older iPhone 11, the iPhone 11 will likely receive 5 years of OS updates compared to 1 year for Samsung. Other OEMs like OnePlus or Sony will have already had support end. Maybe your average customer doesn't really understand why this stuff matters but they do understand that an old iPhone seems to work better than an old Android that cost the same at release.

Of course this is a great decision because people will be forced to buy a new phone more often right? No! People using your phone are a captive audience for selling high-margin services and accessories. If you don't support the phone they'll still use their old phone anyways but will be annoyed and likely to switch to the competition next purchase cutting off all your profit streams.

Pass a new "right to repair" law, such that any OEM that halts software patches on any network-connected device for more than 6 months will be required to unlock bootloaders and publish technical specs.

Apple and Android will see enormous and wonderful community involvement if that were to happen, and congress could force it, should we motivate them.

Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll find a way to support their phones.

Wouldn't the result of that, be that phones that get anywhere even close to being unmaintained would stop dead (or close to it), so Google doesn't get exposed to a problem?

To me, that doesn't sound better than the situation you're trying to fix.

As long as there is also a minimum support window, say 3+ years, and full specs and source are community released, then why not?

The important part could easily be ensuring that older hardware can be accessed. We need an end to binary blobs, or, to force long term blob support and updates.

I imagine a scenario where you pay $20 per year for support and updates for your old device, to a third party.

Or of course, there could be foundations, compile it yourself, etc too.

But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load?

Manufacturers publishing code, sources, and docs is not trivial in of itself.

I know that's the case for lots of open-source software, but since we're coming to that topic, Google's open-source policy that produces software that is either tightly aligned with their own interest (Chrome) or barely usable without their proprietary ecosystem (Android) is shameful. Quite frankly, I would much rather see open-source communities work on linux phones, no matter how useless that may be.

Another reason I'm not a fan of it is that if Google is allowed to transfer their responsibility to a community, I'm willing to bet that their initial support duration will drop even more, and that any issue will be blamed on open-source maintainers, log4j-style.

> But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load?

Does Google share the profits? Is their Android business barely profitable to justify getting free labour?

Forcing 3+ year support in law, plus forced code release at the end, gives a massive change, and some important bits.

It is part 1.

Also, my 3 years support is after last sale... not release date.

is probably sufficient motivation. There's no way Apple would be willing to do that. Google might be, but they might have a lot of resistance from Qualcomm and possibly mobile carriers and other partners.

Comparatively, it's much easier to make a law targeting the stores that's hard to avoid.

It is likely that Google would stand to make more money by offering longer service duration for their OS, and by demanding phonemakers to maintain their firmware.

I guess the info we need to see whether this would be a good decision or not is how much money Google makes from selling apps to phones 3 year and older.

My bet would be on Google successfully lobbying to kill the bill in the first place, or to cripple it and make it irrelevant (for instance with a long grace period that always gets extended).

Depends on what the law makers actually want. Enough legislation is passed just do they can tell their voters "look, we did something" without actually hurting their corporate buddies.

Any locked device must brick itself after 6 months of no patches, to ensure the safety of the network.

A few months of that, and we will arrive at the previous law.

>Any locked device must brick itself after 6 months of no patches, to ensure the safety of the network.

What does this accomplish? Get people mad? Moreover, what prevents someone from making trivial patches to keep a device "up to date", kind of like how people make trivial changes to their passwords to keep up with password rotation policies?

I was thinking that we could name this law after you.

Maybe I misunderstand it, but I think it’s not that bad?

The kernel gets kept up-to-date by LineageOS, the device builds (official or unofficial) use the base builds, but add device-specific tweaks, and cherry-pick commits from elsewhere. And actually a level above that is AOSP which is maintained by Google.

Would love if someone could correct me.

How do you think the CVEs get discovered? What about CVEs in the qualcomm specific code? How do you know that the amateur kernel developers wouldn't fall prey to c footguns and introduce new vulnerabilities?

Don't get me wrong, this is strictly better than the current state of affairs where there's zero patches, but I think people are underestimating how much effort it takes to keep a huge codebase patched.

> We need a lemon-like law for consumer electronics.

I wonder how this should apply to planned obsolescence of devices like smartphones.

On one hand, it's obscene that manufacturers expect us to routinely spend ~$1k on a device that will in the best case scenario last for three years. There's no inherent reason that a flagship Samsung from 2017 shouldn't be perfectly serviceable today, and likewise for a Pixel 6 or iPhone 13 in 2030. However, the discontinuation of security updates makes it so that for all practical purposes they are not.

On the other hand, we can't exactly compel speech or labor. It would be one thing if there were a kill switch triggered after N years, but in this case the obsolescence isn't caused by an active update, rather a lack thereof.

Here's a possible middle ground:

1. Block device manufacturers from arbitrarily deprecating hardware. We can't compel the release of new software, but we can block the release of new software. Require manufacturers to submit a filing with request for approval before the release of any new mobile OS update, which must include an exhaustive list of all supported devices. In the event that a device is dropped from the list in a subsequent filing, it must be explained to the satisfaction of regulators that a specific hardware limitation makes continued support for the device problematic or impractical. Given approval to drop support for a device from an OS release, there would be no obligation on the manufacturer to backport security updates to prior releases.

2. Block component manufacturers from arbitrarily deprecating hardware. Any hardware included in a publicly available consumer electronic device must have its manufacturer commit to providing up-to-date driver software with support for the latest OS for the lifetime of the device. Failure to provide this within a certain time frame (say, three months) following the request of a device manufacturer would open them up to a lawsuit, wherein they could be compelled to publish the most recent release of the driver as open source / public domain. #1 would provide the incentive for each device manufacturer to proactively enforce this, as their entire product roadmap would be effectively frozen if they allowed component manufacturers to drag their feet.

3. Ban irreversible bootloader locking in new devices. Maybe an initial bootloader lock would be acceptable, but power users should have some way to override the lock and install a custom ROM without relying on vulnerabilities in the software.

If you're asking how it gets enforced, there could be a government office tasked with enforcement, and the law could let people sue.

My galaxy note 10 (purchased 2 years ago) is still receiving updates.

In fact Samsung is saying they'll support most phones for 4 years while others are supported for 5:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295639/samsung-galaxy-d...

>Samsung did guarantee support for at least three “generations” of Android OS updates in 2020

The 4/5 year support is for security updates. I will correct that some samsungs are now receiving 5 years of security updates, I didn't realize that.

I suspect that the majority of Android-using techies that notice this are either on a faster new phone cycle than 3 years, or have already priced that difference into their total value calculation.

I also strongly suspect that the average customer does not indeed understand.

You spend the $1M because it improves customer value by far more than $1M and that works out for everyone in the long run. This thread is a testament to what happens when you pinch pennies.

QA exists to keep the sales/avoid returns/refunds. Not for pure customer value.

Do you have a source for that? That does seem pretty low.

I was hopeful with Windows Phone running a build of NT that the platform would still have the same strict ABI compatibility for drivers as the desktop version has. So you get kernel updates and the existing drivers just work.

Now, with Windows getting some emulation support for Linux (one of their Subsystems for Linux effectively translates system calls and execution happens in the NT kernel) I wonder if they could ship a phone running NT with an Android userland.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface

Arm, who has refused to bundle or assure system IP compliance to the level of their CPUs (aka interconnects, interrupt controllers, iommu's, pcie bridges, etc). Meaning that even very basic things like how one gets an interrupt isn't reliable, and somewhat worse are the buggy implementations of arm system IP that are allowed to reach the market.

Google, for failing to provide platform standard interfaces, similar to what the Arm server vendors enforce via SBSA/SBBR. Meaning that every single phone is doing low level platform mgmt in proprietary ways. That includes its own power mgmt, led blinking, etc, a good part of the time actually in the linux kernel, or via proprietary hooks in the linux kernel. Further despite making more money on the android ecosystem than RH+suse+canonical put together their changes are generally dwarfed by other much smaller players (although they have hired a bunch of maintainers over the past couple years).

Linux itself, for failing to provide a stable/backwards compatible driver API. Meaning a small simple driver either needs to spend months upstreaming (if that is even possible, see GPUs) or man years of maintenance keeping up with the kernel churn over the lifetime of the device. Further the arm/kernel community encourages a "everything in the kernel" (everything from firmware functionality, to the actual machine descriptions in the form of all the DTs) attitude which completely fails to grasp the huge number of bugs and device varieties on these arm devices. Its rumored that QC by itself had a million plus lines of out of tree code a few years ago. Its likely that this attitude could more than double the number of lines of driver code in the linux kernel if just the past few years of Arm Soc's were fully supported.

So, the combination of the three are the perfect storm of massive overhead for supporting the couple hundred phone models in existence. Imagine for a moment if every PC model made in the past 10 years required a few (tens) of thousand lines of kernel changes, how unworkable that would be.

There aren't enough engineers to solve this as a brute force problem, the solution is to look at the PC market and consider that maybe it would be better if there were actually some standardization in the phone space.

Compare with the second most successful platform, and how Microsoft has been solving problems for decades while maintaining their first commandment: Thou shall not break backwards compatibility.

I wouldn't say that they've refused to solve its deficiencies; Google is not to blame for nor do they have any control over the Linux kernel's development practices. The kernel developers don't want to have stable APIs and the natural result is that out-of-tree drivers are poorly supported.

If your willing to dedicate an engineer or two to keeping it running then so be it. I can assure you that your average 10 year old PC running Linux probably hasn't gotten that much attention since before it was released. But then again, PC's adhear to industry standards and are mostly iterative designs.

So, to clarify things considering all the answers:

- Qualcomm's development cost is shared amongst all OEMs (Except Google), because all OEMs share the same development branches Qualcomm-side. So 1M$ isn't 1M$ for Qualcomm but more

- Qualcomm's development cost is shared amongst a lot of SoCs. Qualcomm have like one shared tree per year. So one development tree spans maybe 10 SoCs, including XR, automative, IoT, and smartphones. So yeah, from Qualcomm's PoV, it's not 1M$ additional revenue it's much more.

- "Extended support" is +30% of support time (so just one additional year). My source tells me that the actual content of "Extended support" varies a lot. Sometimes it's just security patches, sometimes it's Android major upgrade

- Qualcomm "standard" support is 3 years,

- My source is currently writing a full-blown article about Android upgrades. Not sure you'll trust them more than me though

Would you like to be one of two developers whose responsibility is looking after all security patches and the build and release process for a 100 million line codebase?

Sounds cheap to me.

Though Qualcomm get much cheaper engineers than me in India.

As for e-waste, well unlike other major manufacturers every Google phone can be unlocked and you can install any OS you want. So there is no need to discard the hardware after support ends. You just have to bear the support costs yourself. Too expensive? Well, you're the one saying it's not too expensive, so why not start a company to provide extended support for devices like this? Charge $1 per device, that's a healthy profit over the $0.10 you claim it costs.

I ported Android 12 on thousands of Android devices. I'm already bearing the support cost myself.

Small proof, Android 12 on 17 of devices I bought with my money to support that cost, 7 days after Android 12 is released https://twitter.com/phhusson/status/1447824974396497924

But (and I'm sure this will be an unpopular sentiment) you realize that it doesn't fully address the article's concerns about security. Nor does it provide the experience people expect from tested manufacturer updates (which are far from perfect, but still). This is not the same thing as manufacturer support. You could provide that level of support even as a third party, but it would be a lot more work and it would require the cooperation of Qualcomm and other vendors. You'd need to start a company and charge for your work to make it feasible.

This is about their profits. It's not about security, environmental responsibility, or the users. Regulatory authority exists to promote the interests of the people when the interests of the corporation's profits conflict with them.

....and even if that estimate is two orders of magnitude too small, it's still basically pocket change for Google, which (based on about 30 seconds of Googling, so if I've misread I apologize) has been making tens of billions of dollars per quarter the past few years in net income.

[edit] Figured I'd link the source of my figures for clarity: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

Would you pay $50 for a stick of gum? Why not? If you make hundreds of thousands of dollars, surely it shouldn't phase you?

Money is a means to an end. The fact that so much of our society treats it as their score in the game of life—something to be maximized at all costs as an end in itself—is a disease of the mind.

If Google (and, yes, literally every other major corporation) made more decisions based on what was better for their users (not just "their customers", because in certain aspects of their business that's advertisers, not regular users) and for the health of the planet, while simply making sure that they had a reasonably comfortable financial cushion, we would all be better off, and Google's executives and shareholders would barely notice the difference in their high scores.

On the other hand if you consider the real intention of illuminating Google's cashflow it's pretty damning. Do you pay some relative pittance to keep devices supported, adding value to customers, reducing waste, increasing convenience? 'Cause this is a moral argument, not a financial one, and if you're fleecing the public at large (in myriad ways) it's more a question of the lord giving alms to his subject than it is paying $50 for a piece of gum.

Should Lord Google be a beneficent ruler, or a shitpile?

The argument still breaks down at bigger numbers. If you have 500 different ideas for ways the lord should spend a negligible 1% of his money, then even if you have a good argument that the lord should do something, that's not enough by itself to show that any particular idea meets the bar.

You can't run afoul of antitrust laws without being a monopoly. It's why Apple can make it so safari is the only browser available on the Iphone whereas microsoft lost a bunch of money (particularly in the EU) for installing IE by default on everyone's computer.

Android phones are nowhere near antitrust territory, specifically from google. Before they'd run any risks they'd need to actually outsell someone like samsung or apple.

Just because you are rich and potentially a monopoly in one market, doesn't mean you are in all markets.

It seems reasonable for Google to offer that level of support, certainly. But anyone expecting it isn't paying attention to Google's record.

Apple used to look expensive to me, but if I divide initial cost per number of year of device exploitation, it actually gets cheaper then Android devices.

There's only so much you can do with money. Their yearly profit (once again, not revenue, profit) is larger than the entire state budget revenue of more than 150 countries (not combined) [1].

So yes. The argument is very valid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

There are people who do.

https://wakkinews.com/2018/12/18/worlds-most-expensive-chewi...

    The gums were repackaged and auctioned off to fans who would do anything to have something already used by Britney Spears, including an already been chewed, sticky bubble gum. The gums were sold for between $50 to $100.

In just 4 months the Pixel 3A is officially getting EoL'd. This phone was released in 2019 (fall), same time as the iPhone 11. It just shows the wide gap between iOS and Android.

> Apparently Qualcomm asks for a ridiculous amount of money to support any chip beyond a measly 2-3 years. Apple gets away with it by building their own chips

I can believe it. Qualcomm makes money per chip sold, Apple makes money by building an ecosystem. Linux support is a cost center for Qualcomm past the initial launch kernel, and we can only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.

Hand me down iPhones for teenagers became a no brainer since all it costs is 49$ to get a 3-4 years old phone back to brand new. And they get the blue bubbles in iMessage (which, if you ask parents, is THE social differentiator in schools these days). Having a well architected stack and great engineering pays off in surprising ways!

I would also add that "if you ask students, it is THE social differentiator" as well.

BUT, how the f_ck is it a good thing to encourage teenagers to get locked in to a company's products so they can stay socially relevant? iMessage's manipulative strategy (because teenagers value social belonging) by Apple is morally corrupt. I'm not saying it's effective (because their strategy absolutely is); I'm saying it's wrong. We shouldn't be encouraging children to get locked into the richest company in the world's walled garden for the rest of their life—what they use as teenagers is what they're going to, chances are, keep using for the rest of their lives.

Teenagers literally do not use Android devices. The iOS market share in American high schools is easily over 90%. If you go to a high school classroom, you would be surprised to find more than one or two Android users in one classroom.

Do you want your future to be one where Apple's locked down operating system has a market share of over 90%? Where Android is irrelevant and neglected, and you do not own your device—because unlike on iOS, some Android phones actually do let you unlock your bootloader and boot different operating systems?

Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage. It lets one company cement their iron grip on the upcoming generations and will result in a net loss of computer freedom.

Apple decided to build better messaging on their platform. They saw that carriers simply didn’t care or understood messaging and decided to innovate and take care of the experience. Texting on iPhone just works. We should celebrate that. Google could have created a competing product as feature rich but instead decided to spawn and kill 10 different chat apps.

> Where Android is irrelevant and neglected

Honestly, the android handset makers are already neglecting their own OS, looking at the barely three years of support they offer.

> Please do not encourage the spread of iMessage

I already do. Honestly, I support the platform that just works. To me a phone is simply a tool to get things done.

Downloading Telegram, Signal, Discord, WhatsApp, or the number of third-party messaging applications that is widely used by a number of people, within and outside the blue bubble of the US "just works" as well. And unlike iMessage, these platforms let you chat with other people. What's so wrong with that? Is it too much friction to click to install a (superior with objectively tons more features than iMessage that work on all its platforms) third-party messaging client? Telegram even has games, which are quite popular amongst the teenagers, just like iMessage.

Yes. This is why defaults matter. In this case, it generated a network effect.

> we can only imagine there's a difference in caliber between the engineers writing patches and hacks around the kernel at Qualcomm vs building the OS that powers the iPhone.

Android has to work everywhere from dodgy tablets running Kitkat to flagships phones that cost an arm and a leg.

Oh woe. What a hard life Apple engineers have. Oh, how brilliant they are. The world would crumble without them. Woe.

Apple, somehow, managed to avoid these problems on their SoCs.

> Oh woe. What a hard life Apple engineers have. Oh, how brilliant they are. The world would crumble without them. Woe.

Honestly, they shipped results. And judging by the difference between offers from Qualcomm and Apple, are in a different league.

Not really. You need to compensate Qualcomm for a pile of lost sales from people not getting new phones.

Why would people continue to buy phones with Qualcomm chips? The fact that my 4th gen iPad still works and my mom uses it to watch youtube and browse internet is one of the top 3 reasons I would pay a bit extra for Apple devices.

The last iOS 10 update is 10.3.4, shipped in July 2019, a bit more than 6.5 years after the release of the 4th gen iPad in Nov 2012.

Google-branded phones are essentially just another avenue for them to push Google Play Services, one where they can guarantee the platform experience they envision developing vanilla Android. I think they also serve as reference hardware, but the custom tensor chip on the most recent pixels sorta eschews that… unless they are pushing the idea of putting a TPU on Android phones.

Its similar to why NVIDIA(designer/manufacturer) doesn’t offer as good customer service or warranty on their graphics cards as EVGA (hardware/packager) does.

Probably here there's not a great overarching narrative of reasons, but I ... believe Apple controls more of the components in its phones and can do the management itself

Samsung right? So who is going to compensate Qualcomm for their lost sales because they're shit to consumers?

Google likes to hide behind "the OEMs make those kinds of decisions", but it's not reality: The Android MADA still gives them complete control of every Android hardware platform sold with support for Play Services.

And, considering Google is one of the three most valuable companies on the entire planet, sitting on massive piles of cash stashed everywhere they can possibly stash it to avoid paying taxes.... Google can afford to pay for support if it wants to.

If Google wanted to support phones more than three years, it would do that. It doesn't want to, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise.

It would not be leveraging for the Pixel business either, it would leveraging Android for Android as a whole: Presumably Google could drop support for hardware that does not provide five years of support from the Android codebase. It would then be on Qualcomm to either meet or fail to meet that requirement, and set their license pricing accordingly.

Having a support lifecycle of at least five years is... bare minimum for the industry. Nobody could argue that it is an antitrust issue to require it.

Benefit of actual quality camera lenses is these open source OS can still provide good photos using a stock android camera app.

I say that using a LineaseOS Pixel 4a with Google Camera and don't remember doing anything special to install it.

We're talking about a company that maintains its own fork of the Linux kernel with something like 19,000 patches against mainstream. Anything not in a blob should be easily within their abilities to address.

Also, Nexus and Pixel devices have a long history of software and hardware problems, many of which are immediately obvious within a day or two of devices hitting people's mailboxes, and are never fixed over the life of the phone. It's not like google seems to be picking up the phone very often to talk to Qualcomm for support, even during a device's development, much less after?

The Pixel line jumped the shark when Google started permanently carrier-locking phone bootloaders for Verizon.

It's not just the main Android OS that needs to be patched, the chips have their own proprietary software too.

The problem is that after 3 years, most of those chips have gone EOL and QC wants to put their resources into developing new chips because that's where the revenue comes from (e.g. how they pay their employees). Meanwhile new security flaws keep getting discovered on EOL chips that provide zero new revenue.

So what do you want here? Do you want the break neck pace of innovation to continue which is ultimately very good for everyone? Or should we spend all of our time making sure your Apple IIc still has security patches for 2022? At some point you just have to move on and that's just the trade you make for all technology. You can't simultaneously benefit from this cycle and then bemoan it. If all we ever did was make security patches for your Commodore and AppleIIc you wouldn't have a Pixel3.

I want my perfectly good phone, that I bought 3 years ago, to still get updates. In all honestly, my old Motorola G4 would still be a good phone if it had more storage (and didn't eat SD cards).

Everything about my Pixel 3a (which is EOL in 4 months), works absolutely perfect for all my needs. Great camera, still very good battery life, plenty of storage / power. This is forced obsolescence for a device that is more than capable of handling most everyone's mobile workload. And, as a mobile minimalist, mine especially.

This kinda shit makes me want to go back to a fucking flip phone. I'll probably roll the dice with Lineage or Calyx, but the absurdity of all this is really frustrating.

Microsoft's timilene for OS support is easily 10 to 20 years. Windows XP was released in 2001. It's final ecurity support ended in 2019. 18 years later.

I know, it's hard for modern "programmers" to fathom such a level of commitment.

QCOM Mkt cap 188.12B

Alphabet Mkt cap 1.70T

If your implication is that someone market cap equals negotiating leverage you would only be right if Alphabet was the only elephant that Qualcomm was in bed with.

With so many devices in the wild, I wonder if the Pixel 3 will become our generations HTC HD2 (which got community support for seemly an eternity).

Most devices never get custom ROMs any longer than you would get regular updates anyway (since newer Android versions would not run on this chip).

Custom ROMs are a mess anyway:

- Untrusted sources

- Random annoying bugs (What, you need a camera?? Pff)

- Flaky "Android-Experience" (Yeah, you might be able to install Google Apps... after the 6th try)

- Device is "untrusted" - no Google Wallet or banking apps without yet another hack

- "Security Updates? You can get a full image every 2 weeks if you want that, but no idea what is included and what will break, sorry"

- Performance and stability of the device usually takes a big dive

Most importantly: You cannot build AOSP for a device, if there is no support from the firmware (Qualcomm), which is the main reason why there are no Android updates in the first place - at least that's the problem nowadays.

Why would all the Android Java stuff actually require a newer chip?

e.g. OnePlus 3 started with 7.x, was officially updated only to 9.x, but with LineageOS it runs 11.x currently.

> Untrusted sources

As if the vendors are super trustworthy…

> you might be able to install Google Apps... after the 6th try

Google services are "just one more zip to flash" and I've never heard of having to retry multiple times.

> no Google Wallet

Not too hard to carry the actual physical cards, or use a separate device (smartwatch).

> or banking apps

Complain to your bank / switch to a better bank.

> no idea what is included

LineageOS shoves the commit log right in your face, you can have a pretty good idea when it's really important to update.

> Performance and stability of the device usually takes a big dive

Really? Performance and stability are typically the reasons to switch to custom.

CyanogenMod/LineageOS have been, in my experience, the most performant and stable Android experiences by far, since the 4.x days at least.

I used to ROM-hop a lot, but nowadays, I just stay on whatever the official LineageOS build is (for my OnePlus Nord, that’s still Android 10, but I tried stock and couldn’t handle it) and install my weekly updates.

IMO performance is usually better the more random the ROM (so xXx NoLimits > LineageOS > Vendor OS), stability can be very hit or miss with the random ones but is equal for LineageOS and vendor.

Despite Magisk Hide not getting developed anymore, at least on 10 I can pass safety check despite being rooted btw.

Most of the time it is unusable and slow. It randomly crawls, i.e. opening a browser, an input field, or the GMail App will make the device halt for about 10s. It will never get the new Android. Camera was always crappy with LineageOS. WiFi is broken since a few weeks and will constantly just vanish, needing to connect manually.

I almost only ran Cyanogen or Lineage on my devices, if not stock. I tinkered a lot with my Cyanogen installs back in the days, trying to even the bumps and failings.

Any device that has a decent stock image will run better with stock than any LineageOS or CustomROM in my experience.

As I said, I’m currently still on Android 10, but I don’t really mind that.

Any chance you can name and shame those apps for my further edification?

But Google Pay requires it, so does my Health Insurance app (TK, which I don’t use), and the Banking App for DKB (fun fact, they enabled it in a normal update and left many people suddenly without access).

I don't understand what the problem with that should be though.

Yeah, because what I want is to buy a watch if I want to pay with my phone. Great solution!

> Complain to your bank / switch to a better bank.

Ah, yes, the "Switch-banks-because-your-phone-is-broken"-Trick, didn't think of that!

> LineageOS shoves the commit log right in your face, you can have a pretty good idea when it's really important to update.

Yeah, but the CVEs and firmware bugs are not and will never be in the commit logs. And even if they are, when I install an update on my phone OTA, I obviously will not pull up the commit log! How much time do you think I have?!

That's what the "Security Level"-indicator in the device settings/info is for.

> Really? Performance and stability are typically the reasons to switch to custom.

Yes, really. My LineageOS was always crappy slow on my BQ Aquaris, for every version. The camera is simply unusable. Every update brings another random bug. Since a few weeks it will lose WiFi, needing manual intervention, sometimes just 3 seconds after connecting.

If you want a working device, and not tinker with it all the time, or risk being stranded without certain functionality, you are safer with a device with a decent stock from a manufacturer that updates it diligently.

- Bugs / perf / stability / qualcomm not providing firmware are device dependant, it's a good idea to check compatibility before buying the phone, same as when you're buying a laptop you're planning to use with linux.

- GApps can be installed easily but they're basically spyware, so maybe think twice about that.

- Magisk et similia fix banks app (no idea about Google Wallet, I don't use it)

That doesn't apply for kernel support. Custom ROMs generally use the last supported kernel from some official ROM. Then they start to accumulate known security vulnerabilities, because they never get updated again.

So yeah, weird. I believe their AOSP side is funded by some governments who want the most maintainable and auditable Android on their devices

Hardly death's door...

(1)As measured by Accubattery just now

I recall back in the era of user replaceable batteries they tended to not last very long, and were of incredibly spotty quality.

The market has chosen against that. What you're talking about is forcing people to accept your personal preference, by law, because your design preference didn't win in the market.

Personally, I oppose that.

Did it though? Or did the manufacturers choose that for us by choosing to market phones based on millimeters of measurement and grams of weight and one piece glass backs that most people cover up with a case anyway.

This seems kind of like the car manufacturers saying that they are only meeting demand when they sell large SUV's and trucks, while running ads showing SUV's on dirt trails touting the freedom that a large SUV/truck gives drivers, even though most high end SUV's and trucks won't go any farther offroad than a gravel parking lot at a winery.

If phone manufacturers started competing on environmental costs of their phones instead of being the smallest/lightest, then maybe replaceable batteries would come back.

It's only natural to want something comfortable to use which you can see clearly on and which doesn't break your nose when it falls on your face in bed. A minority (me included) would prefer smaller phones with a massive battery, no matter the thickness - and yet I can't stop marvelling at how cool my new big, light, thin phone is. If my phone didn't break in 3 years I'll think about buying a battery on eBay and replace it (or get it done by someone, if I'm not capable of doing it).

SUVs are appealing because they're big and cost a lot of money. It's often a display of superiority and wealth. Those people would drive a tank if they could.

People are not buying SUVs or phones because of advertising, but because of their intrinsic qualities (whether physical or social).

Uh, that and they're useful? The only thing comparable for the combo of carrying capacity, people seating, and towing of your average SUV is a full size van. Which drives like shit, has terrible visibility side and rear, and is often even more of a break-in target. Oh, and it costs the same or more as that SUV that's easy to park, easy to drive, fits all your kids or family or bikes and luggage and can still haul a light trailer.

The modern SUV is the evolution of the station wagon. Some of the early models were just wealth signals, I can kind of agree with that, but generally there's no better option for someone who regularly hauls 4+ people and a bunch of crap everywhere.

Not really? The most popular non-pickup in the US (The Rav4) only seats 4 and has a 1500 lb towing capacity. Most station wagons can do that (for example the V90 can tow between 1650 and 3700 lb). The Sienna, which is a minivan, can tow 3500 lbs and carry 8 people

And the Sienna has 50% more cargo capacity than a Ford Expedition unless you take out all the seats, then they have about the same cargo capacity.

https://www.truedelta.com/Toyota-Sienna-vs-Ford-Expedition-s...

The Sienna is available in AWD, and has a hybrid drivetrain.

It's biggest disadvantage over an SUV is ground clearance and towing capacity. As you said, the Sienna can tow 3500 lbs, but the Expedition can tow 6000-9000 lbs depending on drivetrain. Well, I take that back, the biggest disadvantage of a minivan compared to an SUV is that the minivan is a minivan.

I'm sure you can find another outlier here and there, but in general, SUV's get a lot of hate but are generally great choices for safety, ease of use, and capability.

Replacing a battery is technically possible still, it just requires a ton of patience, a heat gun, maybe a suction cup, maybe a razor knife. And even then you run the risk of breaking the back glass in the process(been there, done that).

I don't think we need to go back to being able to hot swap batteries on the fly, but surely we can come up with something everyday people can realistically do at home.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X07j5deVIfU

After you remove the cover you still have to remove a few pieces of the top layer of components, as described in guides like this iPhone 13 Pro battery replacement one: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+13+Pro+Battery+Replaceme...

Now, say you tried a DIY repair and you broke the glass, that'd be a different case of suckage, but that doesn't really mean that suddenly batteries aren't replaceable. There could be a discussion around ease of replacement but there is ease of manufacture and sealing properties to consider as well.

On top of that there are a number of peripherals to remove before even getting to the battery. To me that seems extremely difficult.

Not everyone watches youtube or plays games on their phone. With light usage, a phone that might only last 2-3 hours of youtube watching, can last all day instead.

https://www.xda-developers.com/list-android-devices-project-...

> I’ve bought too many Android phones over the years believing Google when they say they’ve figured out how to be better with updates, whether it was the Google Play Store promise or the Android One promise or “Project Treble.” None of it has mattered. It’s too little, too late from Google.

which links to https://www.theverge.com/22881882/android-12-google-pixel-6-..., which says:

> By its nature, Android is a fragmented ecosystem. There’s no straight line from Android 12 to the Galaxy S21 or OnePlus 9 — every major update sees handoffs between the manufacturer, carriers, and Google, all of which result in delays. Initiatives like Project Treble seem to have helped speed up some parts of the process, but unless Google takes some drastic actions, nobody can completely fix the problem.

Case in point, Treble came out in 2017, one year before Pixel 3. Didn't help.

"Project Treble (take a deep breath) is Google's ambitious effort to rearchitect Android in order to establish a modular base in which the lower-level code created by silicon vendors is separated from the main Android operating system"

As in abstracted away hardware code? As in...how operating systems have been built since before TikTokers were even born?

Obviously they get slower and fewer features, but that's better than "Good luck LOL".

Older android phones slow down / get really janky as time goes on. Even when they’re still supporting it.

It’s one of the reasons I left Android. Longer term lives for Android phones is pretty bad, flashing your own ROMs aside (I was done with that long ago).

This is a strange red herring because it is ridiculously expensive, but not meaningfully so on a per-handset basis.

Software development teams are ridiculously expensive. Going from two to four years might require a doubling in staff. You need teams dedicated to old architecture, conservatively $1m for 5 people. Your best engineers will want to move on to newer problems.

The problem compounds. These teams could be instead working on newer products with greater potential return, so they're billable at $4m for 5 people per year. 4 additional years of support is $16m. (This is fairly lean, but should be about the right order of magnitude +/- 1).

With 13m sold, that's about $1/handset. Apple/Samsung budget for this. Google chooses not to.

This reasoning is... really bad. If I were a "rich corporation" and decided to sale a product at a loss or significant reduction in margin for a feature that obvious(based on sells numbers) was not a factor in deciding to buy the phone or not, I wouldn't be a "rich corporation" for very long.

The "richness" of a company has nothing to do, marginal cost does. It obviously didn't pencil out.

The underlying problem with Android is that they're competing with Apple, where all of those sources generate ongoing revenue from older hardware devices, but haven't found an effective way to share revenue between the different parties involved to pay for long-term support. Apple has no problem shipping iOS updates because they don't need you to buy a new phone nearly as much if you're subscribing to iCloud, using Apple Music, and buying from the App Store.

Also, where did you get the "few pennies per phone" number? If that is accurate, what do you attribute google's decision to not spend basically nothing for longer updates from Qualcom?

>feature that obvious(based on sells numbers) was not a factor in deciding to buy the phone or not,

I don't think those customers were informed of the limited support prior to the sale, so those sales numbers are not meaningful in this context. Also, many companies offer longer support. Google is selling Pixel as a premium phone so (in my opinion) offering only 3 years of support is a major abuse of the customer relationship.

As far as pennies per phone, I was referring to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30075970