[wlesieutre]

> Not really surprising given the device's age

Nexus 5 released late 2013, last major OS update in late 2015. Compare to the iPhone 4S, which came out late 2011 and still got iOS 9 (4 years later).

Really not buying the "two years is plenty of updates" excuse, especially from the Nexus line.

[datguacdoh]

Not entirely fair comparison since the 4S didn't get every feature; it was a paired down version. AFAIK, Google doesn't cherrypick features for older hardware - it's all our nothing. Also, the 4S ran terribly on ios9, to the point that two of my friends with 4S's just gave in and bought new iphones instead.

[wlesieutre]

I ran it myself as a secondary device for phone app testing and didn't have that problem. Maybe as a daily driver I would have had more trouble?

In my experience, the bigger issue was designers assuming everyone has the taller iPhone 5 screen size (or worse, iPhone 6) and burning up 95% of the screen with keyboard + giant fixed header + fixed footer. Some apps would give you space for maybe two lines of content in between all that.

More of a complaint with 3rd party devs on that though.

[r00fus]

So - what would you prefer, a slower but secure OS on an older phone, or no updates at all?

Also the "cherrypick" comment is a bit of a dodge - Google already does security patches for older releases (3 years vs. 2).

It would arguably be just as easy to secure one codebase and pare features down for performance.

[threeseed]

Comments like this are ridiculous. It wasn't a pared down operating system by any definition. Features just weren't available if you didn't have the requisite hardware.

[datguacdoh]

Not everything was hardware related, or at least not obviously hardware related. My friends both really wanted public transit directions in maps and airdrop but neither feature shipped on the 4S. I also seem to remember that predictive Siri (Google Now-ish competitor, don't remember what they called that) didn't make it to the 4S.

So I do commend apple for getting updates to that device for 4 years, but at least in their experience, it made the phone worse and didn't bring all the features that they wanted.

[mbell]

> My friends both really wanted public transit directions in maps and airdrop but neither feature shipped on the 4S. I also seem to remember that predictive Siri (Google Now-ish competitor, don't remember what they called that) didn't make it to the 4S.

As I recall all those features were built only for 64bit CPUs which the 4s/mini didn't have.

[datguacdoh]

Oh I never heard that before, interesting and thanks. Well, at least I did say it wasn't "obviously hardware" ;)

[awill]

That's mostly true, but not entirely. When Google released OpenGL 3.0 and 3.1, older Nexus devices couldn't get that.

[megablast]

> Google doesn't cherrypick features for older hardware - it's all our nothing.

well they should.

[fpgeek]

You're getting more than two years of updates. There's another year of security updates, plus at least two years (probably more given historical trends) of system-level app updates ( Google Play Services, Chrome, WebView, Play Store, ...) that only come via OS updates on iOS. Not to mention Google providing compatibility libraries so that third-party apps are significantly less likely to leave you behind.

[icebraining]

Yeah, but the 4S cost $650+ while the Nexus 5 cost $350+.

[notatoad]

>Really not buying the "two years is plenty of updates" excuse, especially from the Nexus line.

I'm not impressed with two years of updates either, but I don't think people have any right to complain when that's exactly what they were promised when they bought their phones.

If people are disappointed because they chose to believe, against all evidence, that Google would exceed the promised two years of updates, that's nobody's problem but their own.

[JohnTHaller]

The Nexus 5 was about 1/2 the price of the equivalent iPhone, so the iPhone should be support quite a lot longer. A Nexus 5 purchased in 2013 ($349 for 16GB) plus a Nexus 5x purchased today ($299 for 16GB at BestBuy right now) is the same total cost as the purchase price of an iPhone 5s ($649 for 16GB when the Nexus 5 launched).

[Grazester]

When you make your own chipset and dont rely on third party binary updates to enable new features also helps the iphone.

[Grazester]

hmmm http://www.androidauthority.com/android-7-0-snapdragon-800-8...