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by supernova87a 2141 days ago
They don't have a "guaranteed support" lifetime, because instead they just have a track record of supporting hardware well beyond the (2-3 sigma) x (average) person keeping their hardware.

When you see "guaranteed support" by a manufacturer, you can be sure that it actually means "guaranteed end of support" timeline. Which Google follows exactly.
2 comments
davidbarker 2141 days ago
I was curious so I looked to see if I could find a chart that shows how long iPhones typically receive iOS updates. Some are up to 6 major releases (and possibly more — we'll find out next year).

https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-compatibility...

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ensignavenger 2141 days ago
Their track record seems to be more recent- earlier iPhone's were not supported nearly as long, from what I have seen.

While Google may end support as soon as they can, not all manufacturers do.

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outworlder 2141 days ago
> Their track record seems to be more recent- earlier iPhone's were not supported nearly as long, from what I have seen.

This is sort of true.

It is true that Apple dropped support for older devices much faster in the past. But it is also true that the older devices were way underpowered.

As an example: when Apple introduced home screen backgrounds on the iPod Touch, they released the same software upgrade for all iPods. However, since the older generation didn't have enough compute power (most likely GPU), they disabled the feature for older generations. I thought they were trying to force people to upgrade, but after a jailbreak and force enabling the feature, I realized that it was not the case. It was not smooth, so this is why they disabled it.

Same goes for, say, iPads. The first iPad quickly got obsoleted, but it was also very underpowered compared to subsequent devices.

They will not hesitate to drop hardware if it turns out to be insufficient, but they are just as likely to disable a feature if there is insufficient hardware support and allow the OS upgrade anyway.

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geodel 2141 days ago
Other vendors are far worse. After using iphone 5s for 4+ years, My kid now watches youtube or play game etc on that phone. Android phones after 2-3 years basically turn to crap. It could be OS/ battery/plastic shell/screen that fail for sure.
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eisa01 2141 days ago
The original iPhone had 3 years support, same as the Pixel 4 :)
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