[jchw]

No, not supporting 7 year old software is not the same as not supporting 7 year old hardware. My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!). Of course, my 2012 Nexus 7 is more obsolete than an iBook G4 by this point. Why? Because in 2012, phones and tablets were basically insecure little toys compared to what they are today. We witnessed the birth of a new computer market, and like the 90s era of computing, it generated landfills worth of eWaste. You can argue (validly!) that some of it was obsoleted quicker than necessary due to poor support or bloated software, but let’s face it; by and large, old phones and tablets are the victims of progress. The 2012 Nexus 7 is never going to be useful even with postmarketOS, because it simply runs poorly with any reasonably modern software stack, not just more modern Android.

I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing, but it’s not a conspiracy. Even if vendors were forced to support devices for longer, I super sincerely doubt we’d see people running around with 7 year old phones. In 7 more years? Absolutely. Just like you now see people running around with 7 year old laptops today.

A real issue is probably just that Apple and Google and other flagship phone vendors continue to pump out a new phone every year even though it is clearly wasteful and pointless. Removing features just to bring them back sometimes is a truly pointless and stupid rigmarole when we could surely just wait 3 more years so that improvements can be made that aren’t pointless tradeoffs. But that is a different story, and arguably is a lot more than just an issue for the computer industry...

[jackewiehose]

I agree with most of what you said but ...

> My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!).

why not Android 11? The Nexus is from Google as well as Android. So at some point they must have pushed some "useless" new features into Android that makes it incompatible with the older hardware. I say "useless" because besides gaming or probably video telephony there's nothing we do today with our phones that couldn't be done with those older devices so I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to run the newest Android.

> but it’s not a conspiracy

conspiracy is probably not the right term but I also don't think it's just a matter of circumstances. In the end they want us to buy new hardware every few years so I claim that the situation is brought to us intentionally.

[Zhenya]

SoC BSP support is your answer. It’s not a conspiracy.

Dollars to support vs user base size / revenue / contractual obligations. The devices were cheap in the first place specifically because there wasn’t going to be a 20 year BSP support contract.

[jchw]

I believe some Nexus 7 ROMs have been made with newer Android releases, but it is indeed pointless. It runs like shit even on the stock ROM anymore.

Modern operating systems are built to take advantage of modern hardware; in my opinion, there is nothing immoral about software being less efficient. A lot of things can lead to less “efficient” software, including better security measures, graphical effects, support for more advanced software and hardware that simply requires greater complexity, ... I have trouble believing that software vendors are sabotaging their performance on purpose. I’d be more inclined to question the intent of silently throttling older phones to improve battery life, which is much closer to an identifiable way that older phone hardware gets slower. But there are so many demands being placed on phones. Lowering audio, input and graphical latency across the stack necessarily costs some throughput. Newer, more complex web browsers running bigger websites necessarily requires more CPU and RAM. These are self-evident truisms IMO.

On the other hand, there’s just so many features that can drive new phones other than the obsolescence of old phones. Enthusiasts might want Wifi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G—all features that can’t realistically be upgraded on existing hardware. Every day users might upgrade because their old phone has a cracked screen that costs more than the phone to fix, or perhaps their contract is up and the carrier or provider is offering essentially a free upgrade; because yeah, carriers certainly play into this role too, not only vendors of hardware and software. Some users might upgrade for features like eSIM, better battery life, wider coverage of international frequency bands, wireless charging...

Something like postmarketOS is still good, but I really feel like these approaches will really start to shine in the coming few years. I believe it is the phones and tablets coming out today that are likely to remain relevant for a long period of time, personally.

Absence evidence that, say, AOSP is being made intentionally slower, I have to sit on the side of doubt.