[badsectoracula]

Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades.

I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).

[tremon]

The regulation already mandates an OS upgrade period, but the period depends on how long the manufacturer keeps selling the model: software updates must be provided for five years from the day when the manufacturer stops selling the product. From Annex II B, section 1.2:

> (6) Operating system updates:

> (a) from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system;

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1670/oj

There's some weasel wording there ("if they provide ..."), so I'm curious how the courts are going to interpret that clause.

[extraduder_ire]

> There's some weasel wording there ("if they provide ..."), so I'm curious how the courts are going to interpret that clause.

Motorola already seems to be testing this interpretation of the law.

https://www.androidauthority.com/motorola-eu-software-update...

[conk]

Why only one decade? I’m still running a 2012 Mac mini. Apple stopped updating Mac OS some time ago, but there are plenty of alternatives that can run on the bare metal. Hardware makers should be required to provide support for the life of the device (defined by customers still using the device), or provide a reasonable way to install 3rd party OS.

[capitainenemo]

At least on Android, when my Samsung Galaxy Note (I loved that phone - replaceable battery, pressure sensitive stylus, IR blaster, OLED, audio jack, water resistant - they went downhill from there IMO) finally end of lifed, I just used the official Samsung tool to upload a community image on it. The process wasn't horrendously difficult. I don't know if people would do it, but it was a clear set of steps that even a tech novice could accomplish if following carefully.

[kube-system]

An operating system is only part of the software you might need to update or secure on a phone (as is the case with many other devices).

[amarant]

Indeed! The law needs to include firmware in some way. I'm not smart enough to come up with how exactly it should be dealt with, but it does need to be dealt with.

Currently Qualcomm decides when your phone stops getting updates, pretty much regardless to who actually made your phone.

Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication to end users.

[microtonal]

Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication to end users.

I am not sure how much of a shout-out they deserve. For example, Fairphone 4 is still supported until this year. They ship with firmware from 2023 and with a kernel patch release from 2024. Every one of their phones is full of holes because their software lags so much.

Even on their most recent model, they are frequently more than a half year behind firmware updates, ship 1-2 year old kernels, and are late with major Android releases (meaning you miss out on security patches not classified high/critical).

Good examples of software longevity are iPhone, Google Pixel, GrapheneOS, and to a lesser extend Samsung flagships.

[encom]

>Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades.

False. This is my work phone and the last update was less than a month ago. It's still supported.

[badsectoracula]

When i wrote that comment i checked gsmarena and it looked to me that it cannot get the latest Android, meaning that even if it gets some minor version upgrade, it wont be long before that stops.

[ratiolat]

It's receiving monthly updates: https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb

[monegator]

The point is it's doable (and it was doable long before that. See the S5.)

[jamesnorden]

>Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades.

I like how you didn't even bother checking if that was true.

[Kirby64]

Samsung committed to 5 years of OS upgrades on that one, so it’s theoretically getting one more upgrade next year at best. (Or maybe 2, if they release one this year). It’s nearly end of life for a software perspective.

[badsectoracula]

I did check gsmarena and it looked to me that it cannot get the latest Android.

[capitainenemo]

So, they have an XCover 7 now - with similar specs.

Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.

[wolvoleo]

Yeah they are really meant for businesses. Frontline workers, factory floors.

This is what we use them for and they do stand up to the abuse. Of course people treat them very badly as it's not something they paid for. Really long support too.

They're not good in terms of specs for the price but that is not what these phones are about.

[capitainenemo]

Yeah, the specs were... decent... nothing standout. Really I was going over the list of things I had lost after the Galaxy Note got rid of all their features and decided the replaceable battery was the one I cared about the most. The ruggedness was just a nice plus.

[torginus]

Phones should be like PCs - they give you the hardware, and you figure out what to install on it. Unfortunately Linux imo is partially to blame here - if they decided to do a stable driver ABI (don't hate me, this was the norm outside Linux and open source OSes), you could easily separate the OS and drivers and update the m separately.

[realusername]

The missing link here is ACPI, unlike on PC, the hardware doesn't describe what it has to the OS, making the task much harder.

The lack of standardization of handled devices is also another factor, they might look similar or even identical but they often are different per region and have some hardware revisions.

Android does have a separate driver partition nowadays but that doesn't help too much.

[umanwizard]

Who is "they"? Linux isn't a person or an organization. The people (and organizations) contributing to Linux are all doing it for their own motivations to solve their own problems. You are asking them to make their lives harder, for free, in service of fixing an issue that they don't care about.

[torginus]

Linus Torvalds for one, but generally people in charge of the kernel have a principle of API/ABI compatibility outside the kernel, but no promise for API ABI stability for anything inside, including drivers.

[0x457]

I think the idea behind parent comment: it's possible to have these features and have a removable battery.

[jodleif]

Would be really nice. Seems like even android is getting more and more locked down

[varispeed]

It's not going to happen, because government need backdoors to the devices. That's why ability to flash own os is severely limited.