[HansHamster]

It is for me. And there is nothing important on my phone so it is not a huge concern. And why do we have to accept that phones just turn into garbage after a few years? Even my old 2009 laptop* still runs an up-to-date OS but my 2016 phone is obsolete after 2-3 years?

* but I have to admit that the hardware is quite slow

[eks391]

> And why do we have to accept that phones just turn into garbage after a few years? Even my old 2009 laptop* still runs an up-to-date OS but my 2016 phone is obsolete after 2-3 years?

It is because computers run one of a few available OS's. The OS is being maintained by the distributer (MS, Apple, Google) and your hardware is good as long as the drivers are still receiving updates.

Phones are different because even though everyone only uses iOS or Android, every Android manufacturer puts their own layer onto Android, so Google can continusously update it but the manufacturer might not. Most companies only maintain their phones for about 3 years, giving a significantly reduced lifetime than computers.

It still works fine, from from a security perspective, keeping the phone without patch support is a bad idea.

[HansHamster]

I mean, I know why it happens, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about accepting it.

It is really annoying how every vendor cobbles together a Frankenstein abomination of a kernel with just the right drivers and patches and good luck trying to run anything else. But I also understand that they (except maybe for Google) have no interest or incentive to clean up this mess.

[berdario]

That's true, and I think that we should be rewarding the companies that are bucking the trend:

Fairphone 5 will receive security updates for 8 years

Pixel 8 will receive updates for 7 years

iPhone 15 will receive updates for 6+ years (apparently, Apple has a track record of between 6 and 8 years)

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Even if your phone really has no access to anything that you wouldn't want leaked (although most people would object to a third party having access to their phone calls, text messages, and location data), a compromised device is still a great way to launch attacks on other devices including taking part in botnets. None of this is an objection to old devices, mind; I'm a big proponent of running new software on old hardware, but the security patches are important.