Apple isn't selling $10 phones in developing countries. If you compare phones at the same price points from major manufacturers/carriers the difference won't be nearly as drastic.

Samsung could definitely both reduce the unnecessarily large number of SKUs, and better unify their software stack so they could update for 5 years all of their phones.

It's crazy how we went from PCs having the right abstractions, where you can easily keep a 10 year old PC updated, to this awful Android situation.

But I know Samsung has the money and manpower to drastically improve the situation, yet they don't care.

With the right abstractions, they would only have a single version of "Samsung OS", like you only have a single version of Windows/Ubuntu. And all devices within reason would be able to immediately update to the latest version of Samsung OS, like PCs can.

And say in your example Samsung does get its shit together and spends a ton of money to upgrade every phone in the world...that's still ~25-30% of the Android population. What about the rest?

My hammer can do this but I have never had a smartphone that achieved it.

As a user, I don't really appreciate all the menus moving around, just because some designer in california needs a promotion.

Unfortunately, currently, updating a device might mean making it useless.

This makes no sense whatsoever. West Bengal has the same carriers and bands as the rest of the country.

Neither does a 1:5 scale model of Big Ben, but Kolkata has that too.

I'm sure there's a knob I can tweak somewhere that makes it work, but a Xiaomi handset is like $20 so I never bothered.

Never heard of vivo. The other 2 are well known phone brands in italy.

Please stop considering US+Canada == "most western countries". Xiaomi and Oppo are big brands, quite popular in Europe (especially Southern Europe), and FFS Oppo are one of the major sponsors of the Champions League, one of the biggest and most popular football competitions in the world.

Samsung is garbage tier and on my list of Never Buy.

They have big marketing campaigns and their phones at max brightness with a cool default wallpaper. The crapware is annoying and the performance is average at best.

I feel its my duty to warn people about Samsung.

I feel like TPM and some modern OSes and software requiring it would like a word in that regard. :(

But yes, it feels like PCs are generally more open to both updates and running different OSes instead of smartphones getting turned into e-waste because of the more closed ecosystem (drivers, bootloaders, support).

- support lifetimes are better than before (now at 4 years by standard).

- but they don’t match up well with versions, eg the S8 support ended earlier this year running an android major version from 2018 (four and a half years earlier), the S9 will[2] stop later this year with a major version that will be four years old, the S10 stops next year with a major version that will be 3 years old.

That’s just what is available rather than what actually runs on existing devices.

For comparison, everything from the iPhone 8 onwards (released nearly 6 years ago) can run the latest OS version, much of it does, and some older hardware still gets the occasional security update.

My understanding of the android ecosystem is that pixel phones are much more likely to be updated than iPhones, though they’re at a lower price point which is why I didn’t look into them.

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

[2] I may be misreading the table here. It could be that the column is ‘current latest version’ and might change before the EOL date.

I don't remember the specifics, but I migrated to iOS after being appalled at how quickly my Pixel phone was losing OS updates, including security updates. IIRC, it was due to lose updates after it was less than three years old.

Its security theatre.

At least now now with Google's own chips (Pixel 6+) the guarantee is 5 years of security updates but still only 3 of Android version updates.

At the very least, marketing and packaging for units sold as new near the end of the security lifecycle should have a disclosure like: “We will try to keep this phone secure until [EOL DATE]. Beyond that date, use of this phone may leave you vulnerable to cyberattacks.” Honestly, that would be a great disclaimer to make a legal requirement for all phones, or even all connected devices for which the concept even makes sense.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Google over 8 years ago. But I never had any involvement with Android in any way, other than trying some versions of Android before they were released outside of Google and maybe giving some feedback internally. I’m certainly not speaking for anyone but myself here.)

Which means that after an initial period of half a year of "production is still slow, you have to wait" and another half year of "we maybe start selling this to Europe now", for the device I've bought today, updates will last a mere 2 years.

They claim they don't do that, and it's 3rd party apps. Perhaps, but it's apps they force onto users with their update process.

I imagine I'm not the only one blocking updates to avoid ads.

Plus, Apple users simply don't care about switching their phones, if Apple says they HAVE TO, they will.

Alternatively: Apple lowers battery drain to reduce the odds of your phone crashing:

* https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/apple-addresses-why-people...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

The main problem with Apple's actions were: not being transparent about what they were doing (and why), and not giving users a choice (toggle) on whether they preferred speed or longevity.

The only thing I got in the last year was a gps firmware update. Security patch level is still April 1, 2021 so really it's been out of support for over 2 years now.

It's a shame because apart from this huge incompetence from Samsung it's the best phone I've ever had. The latest S23 is far inferior in terms of features. No notification led, no 3,5mm jack, lower resolution display than S8, cameras sticking out of the case, much heavier, no 3D glass, no heart sensor, no pressure sensitive screen. Oh and it's double the price I paid for the S8.

The few things where the S23 is better (CPU speed and photo quality) happen to be things I don't care about. But I do care about security updates.

Only the other day, I got a message from Slack telling me their client won't support Android 9 any more, even though, like most apps, I still use the same features I always did.

Groan!

Even comparing like-for-like on flagship products, the androids perform poorly when it comes to Long Term Support.

For me, it is the improved cameras.

Look down market even slightly and the cameras on today's upper and middle mid-range or the those on a two or three year old hero phone poll exceptionally well with users today. Sensors, lens packs, and OIS are good enough and cheap enough for even very low light situations and everything else is software (or perhaps some new hardware as we get more ruin like "A.I." enhancements like portrait mode -- God damn if I have to see another photo with that exaggerated depth of field I'm gonna kick something, but even those effects don't need this years model as the hardware and software for that have filtered out over the last 7 years.

I think we're really at the end for the "I need (or even want) the new phone for a better camera." (note Samsung and others marketing moves to streaming and astrophotography as "normal" photos that most people care about are simply good enough.)

Perhaps something more computationally challenging like live deep fake video and things like that will drive sales going forward and that's "camera" sure (but also that AI chip) but photography, pictures, IMO, has reached a plateau and nothing exciting has happened enough yet in video to replace "outrageously better pictures" as as a that now fading upgrade cycle driver.

I think battery (and weight considerations) could be drivers in the near future. Fast charging, IMO, has been a bigger driver of revenue for phone makers than cameras for the last few years and I suspect we'll see marketing and user demand shifting to "does your phone run for a week without bending your spine" or "does your phone charge in under a minute" something like that becoming a focus in 3-5 years and cameras falling down to compete with things like cover glass which has also plateaued and mostly fallen off the users radar.

Apple's rumored battery and size bump and the EU's move to consumer replaceable batteries is a perfect storm for super fast charging, even at destructive levels, then OEM or 7-11 sales of replacement batteries. I imagine we'll also see optimizations in the rest of the hardware and software stack become a focus for that magical week of battery that's probably not a decade away.

Photography, like cover glass, is bound by some pretty daunting constraints of physics and I think we've hit "good as it's gonna get" or "good enough" or some combination of those for a while and so phone makers need something new to drive their annual or biannual upgrade cycles.

Apple hopes VR will be big and replace a lot of phone and pc use cases, perhaps the way the iPhone and iPad did so much of that 15 years ago, but I don't see that happening for another decade or three (I've used various head mounted VR kits since 1993; it's not happening any time soon.)

Android is too fragmented to say what that ecosystem is betting on over the next 5 years or so, but I'm gonna wager it's battery and screen followed by performance, camera, and then storage, durability and IP rating and all those other "a few small but big spending segments care enough to keep improving" features.

Many people who take photography seriously including many professionals always have a modern ish phone due to the camera.

Phones are invaluable, as they say the best camera is the one in your pocket at all times.

Yes, my Canon takes superior photos especially in low light, but that's for my photos I've specifically set out to catch, whereas my phone is ready and on my person all the time.

Many professionals have their phone as a primary spontaneous on, always ready camera

Also there are shots that iPhone 14 pro max is amazing at like daytime photos, their dynamic range is better than my full frame and to replicate requires a lot of work!

I always upgrade when the jump in camera ability is enough I can warrant the cost.

Much simpler than that: Apple doesn't allow third parties to make iPhones, while Google allows third parties to make Android phones. Devices don't get updated because manufacturers stop providing updates for them.

Apple is doing a better job with operating system updates. On June 21, Apple released a bunch of iOS updates including iOS 15.7.7 [1] for devices going back to the iPhone 6s which was released September 2015--nearly 8 years ago.

There's no reason why the large Android OEMs couldn't do the same if they wanted to.

And that's with 81% of iPhone bought in the last 4 years running a version of iOS 16 [2] five months ago. When iOS 17 is available to be installed in two months, over 90% the installed base will be running iOS 16.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213811

[2]: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/16/ios-16-adoption-stats-f...

Samsung and Google can do 5 years of support because of Exynos/Tensor, and Samsung basically spends the money to support older Qualcomm devices themselves.

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2020/12/qualcomm-and-...

Wrong, there's a big reason: Qualcomm. Newer Android releases often bump the minimum required version of the Linux kernel. If Qualcomm stops supporting a particular chipset, they won't give you new binary blobs (part of what's known as a "board support package" or BSP) for the new minimum kernel version, so you can't update.

Google managed to negotiate with Qualcomm to get them to support old chipsets for longer, but it still falls far short of what Apple does. And now Google is making their own chips for Pixel phones and are doing 5 years of security updates (though still only 3 for major OS updates, boo).

And really, it just boils down to a shitty planned-obsolescence business decision. Apple knows that they will have enough people to buy (either first-time or upgrade) their newest shiny iPhone come release time every year, even if they continue to support 8-year old phones. Google doesn't have that confidence, so they don't put as much effort into upgrades for older devices. And that's Google, who makes fairly high-end phones; the makers of low-end devices know their users are price-sensitive and won't upgrade phones unless they have to.

So it's really two things: one is that they don't want to, and there's no market or regulatory force that pushes them to. And the other is that they truly are limited in how far they can support upgrades, much more limited than Apple is, since Apple controls the entire hardware and software stack.

Having said all that, do understand that I don't endorse or like the current situation here. My Pixel 4 stopped getting security updates (technically last fall, but Google pushed out a roll-up update a few months ago), and I'm frankly not ready to upgrade. The hardware is fine, the software is snappy, and it does everything I want it to. The Pixel 7a is probably my next best bet, but it is yet again a physically larger phone, and I hate that. But this is the situation, and these are the reasons for it.

As far as I understand price sensitive users will stop using apps that don't support their device instead of upgrading. (Or will try to roll back the update of said apps.) Providing base security updates wouldn't change this logic.

I'm not convinced. Apple controls the iPhone market and can do this, but no Android manufacturer controls the Android market. A brand that deliberately reduces its own devices' lifespan can't trust that its consumers will buy another device from the same brand. I think it's just a matter of not offering support being cheaper than some plan to reduced lifespan leading to new purchases.

This is the biggest reason Google is pushing for there being one version of the Android kernel, across all vendors: to make updates always possible.

Open source isn't the differentiator, IMO. OEM fuckwittery is. Just as Dell can junk up this $3,000 laptop with shitty drivers and shell extensions that are markedly worse than what Windows offers natively, so could other Windows OEMs.

The major difference here I think is that until the recent era, MS wasn't competing with those OEMs so they had little reason to try to one-up MS and every reason to leverage MS for as much of the update infra as possible. For the last 5-10 years, with the Surface line, Microsoft has been increasingly encroaching on the top OEM user base and some are fighting back by trying to outdo MS (and failing).

But I don't think anyone is putting the right blame here on Android. It's not the OEMs not serving enough software updates, it's that in many parts of the world, a 10 year old device can still connect to the network and the carriers are OK with that. That device, even it it was from Apple, would not be getting updates that late in its lifetime but large swaths of the world aren't so fucking hung up on phones as jewelry that they update every year, or even every two, or even every 5. Those ancient Android phones in Bangladesh, they're working just fine for their users and even Apple wouldn't be serving them any better with software updates.

Android being open source isn’t the problem.

However with Android, companies sell 100s of millions of devices to consumers that are more concerned about price point than updates. There just doesn't seem to be the incentive for OEMs to care about it, if the majority of consumers refused to buy devices based on old OS versions or ones that didn't get updates, those devices wouldn't get made.

I would be more concerned about security updates though. What percentage of ios and android have all security updates released say t-7 days before applied?

I do think they could and should be more aggressive with security updates. Both by releasing/messaging those separately from other kinds of point releases (improving but not great), and by notifying sooner/more frequently. It definitely irks me when I find out about a critical security patch over a week after it was available, and that the security content is a secondary link with no immediate conveyance of its urgency. And they should also make it a lot more obvious how to go find out if an update is even available in the first place.

Even today(?)’s rapid response, I had to read about it on some site and then remember the incantation to go look to see if the update was available. Of course it was, so I tapped download and install. After waiting a while, I switched to another thing. When I came back, it was downloaded and ready and waiting for another affirmative to do the thing I already requested. I should not need to do any of this when I have automatic updates on.

Normies usually have their updates set to automatic, so they get the updates a soon as they're out.

I count over 9 security updates for iOS 16 [1] as of July 10th, with the rest of the year to go. I feel like as soon as any type of update is released by Apple, I'm inundated with the news from many websites, RSS feeds and the PGP-signed email from Apple with the news [2] [3].

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

[2]: [email protected]

[3]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201214

I have my iPhone and iPad both set to automatic updates, as are some others in the family. I have noticed several times when my iPad will get an update and then a couple weeks later I'll be on another family member's iPad and notice it still hasn't done the update yet.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-content-cach...

A few features I’ve found particularly impactful in recent updates, which do feel like they require a deeper change than just an app are:

- translate button on selected text (and the translation works sufficiently well)

- OCR + selection of text in images, automatic OCR and indexing of text in photos

- oftentimes if you select something in some units, you can select the text and see a conversion to other units (though it is a bit fussy about what it accepts, e.g. it doesn’t like 5’, 5’1, 5’2”, 5lb 3oz, but it is ok with 5lb, $1, 1$, or USD 1)

- The translate button has been in Android for ages but it's using the standard context menu API. Not many apps use it and very few users care, but it's there. Very useful for sending a bit of text over KDE connect!

- OCR + text selection was brought to my phone by a Google Pixel Launcher update. I didn't even notice it until I accidentally selected text from the task switcher.

- I have no idea why OCR is not in Photos yet, I guess the Lens button is good enough for Google, which has worked for years now.

- I guess I don't have unit conversion built into my phone? I could probably install an app that does it from the context menu but I can't say I care. That's what Google Assistant is built into Android for.

None of these features require an operating system update on Android. They're often released around/after a new major Android release, but that's just Google's release schedule. Apple could probably apply these updates through the app store as well if they bothered, but they prefer collecting updates for a year and releasing the as new features all at once.

Curl's ca bundle page says the mozilla bundle is about 200KB uncompressed, and my Android says the Chrome App is 25 MB, so a 1% increase in app size seems reasonable to keep things current.

Certainly, other apps might also want updated CAs, too, but do they need all of them, or only the CAs they might actually use?

This is covered in TFA:

> …especially as Android releases version 14, which has the ability to update its trust store without a full OS update.

IMHO, Google really should work on reducing the OS to the minimum needed, and make it possible for apps to share dependencies. If App A and App B use the same X, it doesn't really need to be downloaded and stored twice. For X including CA bundles, libraries, etc. Then you push play store publishers to update libraries and what not to what is commonly installed.

Want to use a modern web engine but your customers are running a seven year old OS? No problem, the webview updates come AUTOMATICALLY. Want to integrate with Google's new nearby share mechanism? It's already present on the same devices. Google's cloud API changed as part of a recent Android update? No matter, every API feature has already been working on every outdated phone since before you even know there was going to be a problem.

You do end up with annoying clutter supporting all of these devices because of API/permission changes, but it's all quite easy to deal with if you just stuff the compat code away behind an abstraction.

Google really has very little say if some random low-end manufacturer doesn't feel like updating their customers. Sure, they can try to require that they provide updates for a certain amount of time in order to get and keep their Android certification, but at some point they'll just give up and ditch Android entirely.

And on top of that, Qualcomm just won't provide updated kernels and blobs for their older chipsets after a while. Google has managed to negotiate them up from their pathetic 18 months that it used to be, but Qualcomm still doen't have to play ball any further if they don't want to. And Google's making their own chipsets now, so they care a little bit less about that problem.

Not saying it's great, but that's just how it is. Android's model basically means it's just going to be that way. Apple's means they get more control over such things.

Yes it's called planned obsolescence and nature ain't thanking them.

Other than a smallish group if tech enthusiasts and people who consider phones fashion, I argue that most are perfectly happy with their 2020 iPhone or 2018 Android phone. They are clearly not replacing them as fast as the industry expects, so may a small fee for updates, so you avoid having to replace the phone would be acceptable.

Not having old phones on your platform is a failure, not a success. Old Android phones still work okay. Apple isn't giving away free new phones - there is no right to repair.