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Check out these terrible support periods: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#pixel_phones https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=

Check out these terrible support periods: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#pixel_phones https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en#pixel_... An iPhone gets OS updates for years and years, Google's flagship Pixel phone has two years of updates. Never would I spend that money on a phone that has so terrible support.

kyrra 9y ago
It's 3 years now for the Pixel 2[0][1]. This has been discussed before on HN, and it tends to fall on the reliance on Qualcomm as the chip maker, who is responsible for driver ports on any kernel upgrades. It's the reason Google kicked off project Treble[2]. [0] https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2_specs https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2_specs [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/google-says-pixel-2-will-receive-three-years-software-updates/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/google-says-pixel-2-... [2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...
- robin_reala 9y ago
  Treble’s great, but overall it’s still not iOS competitive. For example, the iPhone 4S and 5 got 4 years and 10 months of OS support, and the 5S that launched 4 years ago got iOS 11 and presumably will get all the updates this year.
  - caf 9y ago
    The "minimum 3 years support" for the Pixel 2 and the 4 years 10 months actual support for the iPhone 4S / 5 are not comparable numbers, exactly because one is the minimum they're promising (so it will apply from the date that the phone is discontinued) and the other is the maximum achieved (so it was measured from the model release date). Anyone who bought an iPhone 4S at the end of its run only got 2 years of support. The iPhone 5 did much better though - 3 years 10 months. For the the iPhone 5S to reach a minimum of 3 years support, it'll have to continue to get updates for another 17 months.
    - x0x0 9y ago
      Google cut support relatively early for plenty of phones, including my Nexus 5. There were endless stupid excuses about chipsets, but the fact remains: nothing past 6.0.1. They barely supported it for two years.
      - pja 9y ago
        IIRC Google cut support for the Nexus 4 whilst maintaining support for their tablet that used exactly the same chipset. One of Google’s Android engineers even did their own cut+paste builds for the Nexus 4 from the new Android release at the time. Dropping support at that particular point in time was purely a marketing / management decision that wasn't driven by any technical considerations whatsoever. When you do this kind of thing as a company over and over again, people notice.
        bipson 9y ago
        Never heard these claims. Source?
        pja 9y ago
        Here’s a blog post by the programmer in question: http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.+Thoughts&proj=02.%20Android%20M%20on%20Nexus4 http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.+Thoughts&proj=02.%20Android... I think that covers most of the main points. Of course, it may be that it all came down to support contracts internally between Google and the Nexus device suppliers (the Nexus 7 blobs come via Asus, the Nexus 4 was an LG device that used the same Qualcomm chipset IIRC.) but that’s the kind of detail that end users really don’t care about: both were Google devices that Google sold & from the point of view of the end user Google dropped support for one device for no obvious reason as far as the end user can see.
      - caf 9y ago
        Sure. The point here is that the promised "3 year minimum OS updates" for the Pixel 2 is a significant improvement on that.
- dmitrygr 9y ago
  As a user, I do not care at all whose fault it is that my phone gets no updates after three years.

kyrra 9y ago

It's 3 years now for the Pixel 2[0][1]. This has been discussed before on HN, and it tends to fall on the reliance on Qualcomm as the chip maker, who is responsible for driver ports on any kernel upgrades. It's the reason Google kicked off project Treble[2]. [0] https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2_specs https://store.google.com/product/pixel_2_specs [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/google-says-pixel-2-will-receive-three-years-software-updates/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/04/google-says-pixel-2-... [2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes-treble-modular-base-for.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/05/here-comes...

robin_reala 9y ago
Treble’s great, but overall it’s still not iOS competitive. For example, the iPhone 4S and 5 got 4 years and 10 months of OS support, and the 5S that launched 4 years ago got iOS 11 and presumably will get all the updates this year.
- caf 9y ago
  The "minimum 3 years support" for the Pixel 2 and the 4 years 10 months actual support for the iPhone 4S / 5 are not comparable numbers, exactly because one is the minimum they're promising (so it will apply from the date that the phone is discontinued) and the other is the maximum achieved (so it was measured from the model release date). Anyone who bought an iPhone 4S at the end of its run only got 2 years of support. The iPhone 5 did much better though - 3 years 10 months. For the the iPhone 5S to reach a minimum of 3 years support, it'll have to continue to get updates for another 17 months.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    Google cut support relatively early for plenty of phones, including my Nexus 5. There were endless stupid excuses about chipsets, but the fact remains: nothing past 6.0.1. They barely supported it for two years.
    - pja 9y ago
      IIRC Google cut support for the Nexus 4 whilst maintaining support for their tablet that used exactly the same chipset. One of Google’s Android engineers even did their own cut+paste builds for the Nexus 4 from the new Android release at the time. Dropping support at that particular point in time was purely a marketing / management decision that wasn't driven by any technical considerations whatsoever. When you do this kind of thing as a company over and over again, people notice.
      - bipson 9y ago
        Never heard these claims. Source?
        pja 9y ago
        Here’s a blog post by the programmer in question: http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.+Thoughts&proj=02.%20Android%20M%20on%20Nexus4 http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=06.+Thoughts&proj=02.%20Android... I think that covers most of the main points. Of course, it may be that it all came down to support contracts internally between Google and the Nexus device suppliers (the Nexus 7 blobs come via Asus, the Nexus 4 was an LG device that used the same Qualcomm chipset IIRC.) but that’s the kind of detail that end users really don’t care about: both were Google devices that Google sold & from the point of view of the end user Google dropped support for one device for no obvious reason as far as the end user can see.
    - caf 9y ago
      Sure. The point here is that the promised "3 year minimum OS updates" for the Pixel 2 is a significant improvement on that.
dmitrygr 9y ago
As a user, I do not care at all whose fault it is that my phone gets no updates after three years.