[theshrike79]

This is directly from Pratchett's "Samuel Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness".

Well-off people can afford the iPhone SE, which will get updates for 5-6 years. Poorer people get the fancy schmancy latest Android device with 42 front cameras that'll stop getting OS updates in a year or two. After 3-4 years it's completely unsupported by anything and bordering on unusable, at this point even the security updates have stopped.

Then they go get a new Android phone and GOTO 10.

[Batman8675309]

>that'll stop getting OS updates in a year or two.

Buy better phones then? Samsung and Google both offer 5 years of updates now.

>after 3-4 years it's completely unsupported by anything and bordering on unusable No they aren't, and we all know you don't have a source to support this.

[theshrike79]

"Now" being the operative word here.

4+ years ago this wasn't the case and I watched people get burned by shitty support multiple times - all the while my iOS devices chugged along. Even flagship phones could get 0-1 official OS level updates.

Oh, and check the fine print on those promised "updates". IIRC the Samsung one guarantees "security updates" for 5 years - basically they'll backport fixes for high enough severity CVEs to older phones. You won't be getting 5 Android OS updates on them.

I'm willing to bet actual money that no more than a half dozen Android models you can buy _today_ with Android 12 on them will get Android 16 as an official update. On the other hand I can pretty much guarantee that the iPhone 13 being sold today will still get iOS 20.