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.
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.