[hn_throwaway_99]

Unrelated to this article specifically, but the biggest thing I'm looking forward to with the Pixel 6 is the improved updates timeline, as Google has said they will provide updates for at least 5 years, which puts them more in-line with Apple.

Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS updates after only a few years.

[ChuckNorris89]

>Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS updates after only a few years.

AFAIK it's not inexplicabile, it's just Quallcomm stopping driver support for newer Android versions a few short years down the road, since they're in the business of selling as many chips as possible and can't monetize the users keeping their phone longer like Apple and Google can with their software and services.

[Teknoman117]

Qualcomm will only ever ship one kernel version for a given SoC and never try to upstream support.

Google uses LTS Linux kernels for Android, and once upstream stops supporting a version, the phone usually stops getting support shortly after.

[zozbot234]

Last I checked, the postmarketOS folks were working on submitting drivers for older devices to the mainline kernel, with some notable successes.

[Teknoman117]

Right. My point was that Qualcomm is not doing this themselves. The only snapdragon support in upstream (Linux, Mesa, etc.) is done by dedicated people in the OSS community.

Qualcomm (and MediaTek, etc.) fork the latest LTS kernel or android common kernel, hack it up for that SoC, and dump that on vendors as the msmXXXX kernel.

They'll rebase on top of upstream or android common kernel patches (of that version) for the contracted lifespan, and then pretend that SoC didn't exist.

[matmatmatmat]

This seems like such a short-sighted move by Qualcomm, is there some reason that they would do this and risk losing Google as a customer? Or, did they always assume that they would lose Google as a customer and so they thought it wouldn't be worth the investment?

[Teknoman117]

Google really doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. As big as they are, so far it doesn't appear that they've decided that this isn't an important enough problem to make their own phone SoCs. Qualcomm doesn't exactly have many competitors that could be endorsed over them. Huawei/HiSilicon is anathema in US, Samsung uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon over their own Exynos line in the US, Amlogic and MediaTek don't make high-end SoCs, and Apple only makes them for their own phones.

Qualcomm thrives off of the trend of people expecting new phones every year (or every 6 months in some cases). Since they target the mid and high cost devices, all they have to do is make the phone work for a two or so years, and most people buying those phones are going to have gotten bored of their phone by then.

This is one of the main motivations for Project Treble, which is to completely disconnect the phone's userspace from the kernel version it runs on. It's a hard challenge though. Qualcomm and the other vendors for these high turnover products aren't all that interested in supporting it, because they benefit from replacing phones frequently. If you've ever looked at one of the phone kernels, they shove way more into them than upstream would ever accept (the entire radio stack, graphics stack, quick charge logic, etc.). This tends to make the software running on Android phones heavily coupled to the vendor kernel.

[zozbot234]

The downstream kernels are full of terrible and disgusting hacks. They're just doing the bare minimum to get some semblance of Linux running on the hardware, then forgetting about it almost entirely aside from whatever random security hotfixes they're going to release, and refocusing entirely on their next design. There's no real effort being put into coding for long-term maintainability, that's left to the hobbyist community.

[actuator]

Amortized cost on the update cycle of Pixel was pretty similar to iPhone(at least in some parts of the world). But I am glad that they are doing longer updates.

I just wish batteries become replaceable again, my phone is 3.5 years old and the only thing that is noticeably worse is battery life. If we are gunning for longer update cycles, batteries should ideally be replaceable. I sincerely hope some big country takes up this as an environmentally friendly/right to repair thing and forces all manufacturers to do this.

[iav]

If you factor in the resale value of a 2 year old iPhone and a 2 year old Pixel, I doubt this is true. And one of the biggest reasons for the high depreciation is the loss of software updates...

[actuator]

Yeah, that's definitely true.

I think more than software updates, iPhone has an aspirational value in many parts of the world so there is good demand from people who can't buy a new one. Pixel in itself doesn't hold that value and there are manufacturers who will have an Android phone with Pixel's specs in half the price of Pixel within a year of its launch.

[nicoburns]

It's not as convenient as a user replaceable battery, but most phones have batteries that are replaceable by repair shows cheaply.

Weirdly my 3.5 year old phone actually has about the same battery life as it started with. As android 3.5 years ago was terrible at battery management, so software updates have compensated for battery degradation.

[actuator]

But all those replacements seem to be with someone pulling apart the phone's components secured with glue. It looks extremely risky and likely to cause damage to phone or components like display ended up getting scratched.

Also, are original spec batteries available easily? I don't want to put something which is not the same as it might cause some battery related accident.

[nicoburns]

I think the repair shops tend to have specialised tools for dealing with this. Things like suction cups to pull the screens off with.

[t0bia_s]

OLED dispalys are very sensitive for pressure. But isolropyl alcohol helps a lot with detatching anythig glued.

[t0bia_s]

I replaced battery in my smartphone from 2018 last week. Works perfect. It is not that difficult. Look on few guides on YouTube and you'll be fine. Be carefull with battery detatch. Usually it is glued by tape, but isopropyl alcohol helps a lot.

[fasicle]

Agreed - I'm still on a Pixel 2 and the phone is running great except the battery life. I have to charge it twice a day now.

[dheera]

"Tensor"? Google makes some great stuff but I really wish their product naming conventions weren't so confusing.

First they have the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and then ... Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, ... oh wait they aren't versions, they are number of inches ... -____- and most people in this world don't even think in inches -_____-

And then they have Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Meet, google Meet, Google Chat, Google Hangouts Dialer, Google Duo, Google Uno, uh ....

And then now TensorFlow and then Tensor ... is that like TensorFlow without the flow?

[ferdowsi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit

> Osterloh did explain that the SoC is an ARM chip designed around a TPU, or Tensor Processing Unit

[xnx]

This is a great benefit and likely a direct result of them having more (total?) control over the hardware and related drivers.

[m3kw9]

The industrial build quality would also need to be on par with Apple iPhones to see all the updates.