[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.