[MichaelApproved]

It's not about having the latest & greatest, it's about having a secure device. Imagine hundreds of millions of devices with security holes no longer being patched after 2 years.

At least XP was supported for over a decade. Having a device as expensive as a phone (for the market) no longer patched after 2 years isn't a good idea.

[NotOscarWilde]

I completely agree. The point is even worse for "the next five billion" because they are the people that buy the previous generation phones. No matter what Android One costs, previous generation Android One will cost less and be almost equally useful.

I really feel the right, responsible thing to make the next five billion secure is to support previous generation phones as long as the phones are still the same functionally.

Continuing with my Galaxy Nexus comparison: GN is a 2011 phone and it seems nothing is on the horizon for 2015 that's going to make it obsolete -- the new phones look and feel the same as it does.

(I know it's anecdotal, but being Central European, I am the only one in my family with a phone that runs Android 4.0 or higher (no iPhones either) -- they all have either Android 2.0 or pre-OS phones. I say this to stress that people here really do stick with their phones as long as they work.)

[microtonal]

The Galaxy Nexus is a special case, because its SoC producer (TI) stepped out of the smartphone market and apparently the drivers were closed source. The Nexus 4 and 5 will probably fare better.

Although in contrast to e.g. Safari on Android, Chrome does get continuous updates, even on older phones. But, of course, the general point is still true - most Android phones are updated for a miserably short period. Cyanogenmod deserves a lot of credit of lengthening the lifespan of devices.

[buster]

Seriously, i think many people don't care about the Android version they are running and won't care to check for updates even if they are available.

[krisgenre]

Ya, the people don't care and that's the problem for us developers.

App development sure is easy if large percentage of the user base are on the latest version of the OS, Apple does win here.

[aianus]

Stop supporting them after two years and they'll have to upgrade.

[jarek]

> won't care to check for updates even if they are available.

At least in 4.4 you automatically get a notification when an update is available

[buster]

Yes, but i think this "i want the latest update" argument is much exagerated on HN, but not so much important for Joe User. My gf just bought a cheap android phone and i told her that it won't receive any updates but she didn't care. Offering to check for updates (the nerd that i am) she still refused. She just doesn't want to be bothered with it. I suppose that is true for many people. And, to be honest, Android didn't have truely interesting new features for several releases. I own my google phone, and it's nice for me to be on the latest releases all the time, but truth be told i couldn't tell if my phone ran 4.0 or 4.4.

[acdha]

There are two forms of this argument. Many people don't care about new features but everyone needs to care about security updates and, eventually, a relatively recent browser. If they don't care yet, give them one major exploit and they will next time.

Many Android users have a distinctly inferior web experience because they're running a copy of WebKit from 2011 or so but they'd be perfectly okay with an upgraded browser which has the same UI but supports the more recent features supported by the sites they use. Unlike the app situation, this is more noticeable because sites upgrade outside of your control and Android's fragmentation means that many sites won't make it a major priority when deciding whether to backport or simply disable new features on older devices.

[jarek]

Ah. Yeah possibly, if people are approaching it like they used to approach phones: what's there is what will work.

Personally I come to smartphones from a x86 PC point of view, so not being able to reflash/reinstall whatever OS I like is a disaster already, to say nothing of no OS updates :).

But on phones not targeted to enthusiasts this is probably not a problem.

[mvp]

Isn't this situation rapidly changing? A few years ago, people wouldn't dream of 'installing apps'. But now, many non technical people install apps. In fact, I know many non technical people who are more eager to install apps. A developer might think, ah I'll write a program to do this and do that. Non techies only think in terms of what apps can I do some job.

I bought HTC desire for my wife couple of years ago inspite of her insisting she won't have use for a big phone. Now, she uses it for Whatsapp, Facebook, Pinterest etc. In fact, she seems to know more about these than I do some times.

[jarek]

I'm not sure how installing currently available apps compares to installing future core OS updates, can you explain what you mean?

[on_and_off]

Many things (namely google apps, play services, some security patches) have been separated from the core OS, leaving only deep changes to the OS update.

[blueskin_]

Didn't you get the memo? This is the Brave New World where everything runs in Javascript or on Google's servers. Security? Isn't that one of those 'privacy' things that terrorists like? </s>