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Finally, can't believe it took them this long. The sorry state of the update situation is one of the worst things about Android. Next step would probably be to

Finally, can't believe it took them this long. The sorry state of the update situation is one of the worst things about Android. Next step would probably be to provide an API to the OEMs so they can add their "value add" functionality as apps, so Google can push updates to all phones regardless of hardware drivers and OEM modifications. And maybe make it possible to update emoji via the Play store, instead of needing a new system update. I don't like the blank boxes in messages from my iOS friends. I wonder if this means that Google will lead by example and prolong the time they deliver updates to their own phones. They don't guarantee new updates to their current Pixel phones after October 2018 [0], which is not good enough. [0] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en

pjmlp 9y ago
It is an illusion to think this will ever change, if Google doesn't make it legally binding to having updates in place to access Google Play Services for example. There are no incentives in place for doing otherwise. Already in the old days, Nokia was one of the very few manufacturers that bothered to provide firmware updates, and even then usually only once.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > Already in the old days, Nokia was one of the very few manufacturers that bothered to provide firmware updates, and even then usually only once. When you put it that way, it seems like it's gotten a lot better.
- sorenjan 9y ago
  If Google makes it easier for manufacturers to make phones that can be updated OTA by Google than phones that can not (custom Android builds) most of them would probably do so. Have a hardware layer, an Android system layer, an OEM layer, and have a clear interface between them so they can be updated independently. Then Google should push updates themselves, they can't leave that to phone manufacturers or carriers, like you said, there's no incentives for them to do so. Of course, this has been an issue for Android since day one, so I wont hold my breath. Are there any work done on a system similar to the one on PC, where software can enumerate available hardware? We have advanced computers in our pockets, but they can't be updated to a new OS version as easy as a 15 year old PC. It's ridiculous.
  - 0xFFC 9y ago
    I am more optimistic than you two, i think for mide range and high range devices, there is incentive: competition. But i have to agree, for low end devices, even from famous companies i dont think they will update their phone even with this.
  - izacus 9y ago
    But "ease" isn't the problem - the issues OEMs have are because they literally go hack and fork the AOSP source itself (making upstream merges hard or impossible) for sometimes really dumb reasons. This is also the source of constant headaches for us app developers (like the recent case where Realm found out that Samsung broke memmove() on their devices!). The other issue is that there's zero (0, no) incentive to update the devices. No matter how easy it is - the OEMs see that as a pure cost that won't be recuperated. For each of the (literaly!) 100 devices they churn out per year they need to get new drivers from the SoC manufaturer (and Qualcomm pretty much does not give a crap about SoCs of the previous year, especially lower end ones - which makes this process stop there), update the kernel and move all their specific hacks to it. I don't see how these changes Google did will change incentives. The only way we might see a change in this field is by a few class action suites from users being left without updates or regulators putting down the punitive damages hammer. Everything else is just Google kindly hoping OEMs will stop being dicks from the goodness of their heart. In car industry we have strong regulation which demands that your car is serviceable at least 5 years since last unit was sold (and that their security issues are fixed by recalls). We need that for arguably the most important electronic devices in our lives as well.
    - throwaway47861 9y ago
      You pretty much made the entire thread superfluous. Very well articulated and I fully agree, the suits don't care if you reduce their expense if they can skip the expense whatsoever.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > No matter how easy it is - the OEMs see that as a pure cost that won't be recuperated Treble removes much of the cause for forking, and removes the cost for OEMs that follow it's design.
- mavendependency 9y ago
  Wasn't it Google's fault anyway. Without a stable ABI, updates will require SoC vendor involvement, which is a limited time affair.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    That is what contracts are for.
    - vetinari 9y ago
      So a Qualcomm refuses to sign such a contract. What are going to do, use Mediatek for your flagship? On the Porters five forces scheme of things, the SoC vendors have much better bargaing power than device makers.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        There is a free market out there. Long time ago, people also though ARM was going to close doors. If Qualcomm refuses, other would gladly do and eventually become good enough for Qualcomm to either change their mind or become irrelevant.
        mavendependency 9y ago
        Talent and IP are in extremely limited supply. Your alternatives are mediatek and spreadtrum.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        So be it. The majority of my devices don't have Qualcomm.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  I remember having to physically take my Nokia Communicator into a service center to get the firmware updated.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Towards the end of the featurephone era it became more common. And i think Nokia got into it because they had a very popular model that was found to have a nasty flaw. I still recall news reports about people queuing to get theirs flashed (this was back when GSM was the hot new system, and carriers were giving away phones if you signed up with them).
0xFFC 9y ago
I just switched to iphone se 4 months ago, and I couldn't be any happier. Tbh i did like android, but the only problem for me was 2 year only update. That is not enough. Not even close when similar products from apple get 5 year suppurt. Specially now, after passing a threshold, our phones SoC are capable of handling ordinarily jobs (like if you are not into playing AAA games) for more than 4 years, performance wise. P.s. After using iphone for 4,5 months i have to say , their i products are awesome. Far superior than android in term of consistent performance and fps.
incompatible 9y ago
A stable binary device-driver API has always been resisted in Linux. I suppose that's what Treble is?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kuschku 9y ago
  Not exactly. Treble is a stable API between userland and kernel. Userland can be quickly updated even if the drivers are not, and if the drivers are updated, userland can stay the same. The long term plan smells of Magenta. Sadly, we have nothing like this, or a stable driver API on desktop linux at the moment, which is <insert expletives here>.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    > Treble is a stable API between userland and kernel. Stock Linux definitely has a stable userland API, though I imagine that third party driver vendors don't know how to do stable userland APIs. > Sadly, we have nothing like this, or a stable driver API on desktop linux at the moment, which is <insert expletives here>. As for driver ABI compatibility, I know that almost all enterprise distributions maintain kABI compatibility for a particular release of their distribution (this is one of the selling points of such distributions). I believe there are also some community distributions with similar stability guarantees (for instance openSUSE Leap uses the same kernel as SUSE Linux Enterprise, so I would assume the same guarantee is provided).
    - barrkel 9y ago
      "stable userland API" Try copying some Linux binaries between a few distros, a few release years apart and tell me again about stability. Try the same with some Windows apps and compare and contrast. API == ABI for stability purposes, and the kernel isn't the problem, otherwise things like docker wouldn't meaningfully work at all. It's all the auxiliary libraries, much larger surface area.

pjmlp 9y ago

It is an illusion to think this will ever change, if Google doesn't make it legally binding to having updates in place to access Google Play Services for example. There are no incentives in place for doing otherwise. Already in the old days, Nokia was one of the very few manufacturers that bothered to provide firmware updates, and even then usually only once.

microcolonel 9y ago
> Already in the old days, Nokia was one of the very few manufacturers that bothered to provide firmware updates, and even then usually only once. When you put it that way, it seems like it's gotten a lot better.
sorenjan 9y ago
If Google makes it easier for manufacturers to make phones that can be updated OTA by Google than phones that can not (custom Android builds) most of them would probably do so. Have a hardware layer, an Android system layer, an OEM layer, and have a clear interface between them so they can be updated independently. Then Google should push updates themselves, they can't leave that to phone manufacturers or carriers, like you said, there's no incentives for them to do so. Of course, this has been an issue for Android since day one, so I wont hold my breath. Are there any work done on a system similar to the one on PC, where software can enumerate available hardware? We have advanced computers in our pockets, but they can't be updated to a new OS version as easy as a 15 year old PC. It's ridiculous.
- 0xFFC 9y ago
  I am more optimistic than you two, i think for mide range and high range devices, there is incentive: competition. But i have to agree, for low end devices, even from famous companies i dont think they will update their phone even with this.
- izacus 9y ago
  But "ease" isn't the problem - the issues OEMs have are because they literally go hack and fork the AOSP source itself (making upstream merges hard or impossible) for sometimes really dumb reasons. This is also the source of constant headaches for us app developers (like the recent case where Realm found out that Samsung broke memmove() on their devices!). The other issue is that there's zero (0, no) incentive to update the devices. No matter how easy it is - the OEMs see that as a pure cost that won't be recuperated. For each of the (literaly!) 100 devices they churn out per year they need to get new drivers from the SoC manufaturer (and Qualcomm pretty much does not give a crap about SoCs of the previous year, especially lower end ones - which makes this process stop there), update the kernel and move all their specific hacks to it. I don't see how these changes Google did will change incentives. The only way we might see a change in this field is by a few class action suites from users being left without updates or regulators putting down the punitive damages hammer. Everything else is just Google kindly hoping OEMs will stop being dicks from the goodness of their heart. In car industry we have strong regulation which demands that your car is serviceable at least 5 years since last unit was sold (and that their security issues are fixed by recalls). We need that for arguably the most important electronic devices in our lives as well.
  - throwaway47861 9y ago
    You pretty much made the entire thread superfluous. Very well articulated and I fully agree, the suits don't care if you reduce their expense if they can skip the expense whatsoever.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > No matter how easy it is - the OEMs see that as a pure cost that won't be recuperated Treble removes much of the cause for forking, and removes the cost for OEMs that follow it's design.
mavendependency 9y ago
Wasn't it Google's fault anyway. Without a stable ABI, updates will require SoC vendor involvement, which is a limited time affair.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  That is what contracts are for.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    So a Qualcomm refuses to sign such a contract. What are going to do, use Mediatek for your flagship? On the Porters five forces scheme of things, the SoC vendors have much better bargaing power than device makers.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      There is a free market out there. Long time ago, people also though ARM was going to close doors. If Qualcomm refuses, other would gladly do and eventually become good enough for Qualcomm to either change their mind or become irrelevant.
      - mavendependency 9y ago
        Talent and IP are in extremely limited supply. Your alternatives are mediatek and spreadtrum.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        So be it. The majority of my devices don't have Qualcomm.
LeoPanthera 9y ago
I remember having to physically take my Nokia Communicator into a service center to get the firmware updated.
digi_owl 9y ago
Towards the end of the featurephone era it became more common. And i think Nokia got into it because they had a very popular model that was found to have a nasty flaw. I still recall news reports about people queuing to get theirs flashed (this was back when GSM was the hot new system, and carriers were giving away phones if you signed up with them).

0xFFC 9y ago

I just switched to iphone se 4 months ago, and I couldn't be any happier. Tbh i did like android, but the only problem for me was 2 year only update. That is not enough. Not even close when similar products from apple get 5 year suppurt. Specially now, after passing a threshold, our phones SoC are capable of handling ordinarily jobs (like if you are not into playing AAA games) for more than 4 years, performance wise. P.s. After using iphone for 4,5 months i have to say , their i products are awesome. Far superior than android in term of consistent performance and fps.

incompatible 9y ago

A stable binary device-driver API has always been resisted in Linux. I suppose that's what Treble is?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kuschku 9y ago
Not exactly. Treble is a stable API between userland and kernel. Userland can be quickly updated even if the drivers are not, and if the drivers are updated, userland can stay the same. The long term plan smells of Magenta. Sadly, we have nothing like this, or a stable driver API on desktop linux at the moment, which is <insert expletives here>.
- cyphar 9y ago
  > Treble is a stable API between userland and kernel. Stock Linux definitely has a stable userland API, though I imagine that third party driver vendors don't know how to do stable userland APIs. > Sadly, we have nothing like this, or a stable driver API on desktop linux at the moment, which is <insert expletives here>. As for driver ABI compatibility, I know that almost all enterprise distributions maintain kABI compatibility for a particular release of their distribution (this is one of the selling points of such distributions). I believe there are also some community distributions with similar stability guarantees (for instance openSUSE Leap uses the same kernel as SUSE Linux Enterprise, so I would assume the same guarantee is provided).
  - barrkel 9y ago
    "stable userland API" Try copying some Linux binaries between a few distros, a few release years apart and tell me again about stability. Try the same with some Windows apps and compare and contrast. API == ABI for stability purposes, and the kernel isn't the problem, otherwise things like docker wouldn't meaningfully work at all. It's all the auxiliary libraries, much larger surface area.