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I'm surprised that the comments don't focus much on security patches. Manufacturers are trying very hard to have built-in obsolescence: https://www.theregister.

I'm surprised that the comments don't focus much on security patches. Manufacturers are trying very hard to have built-in obsolescence: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/dutch_court_says_samsung_has_no_obligation_to_keep_old_phones_patched/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/dutch_court_says_sa... Unless this fundamentally changes, most non-techy users will have to needlessly upgrade perfectly good devices, run insecure software or become much more savvy about which manufacturers are better in this regard.

captainbland 8y ago
I wonder if there's viable market in keeping old phones up to date, maybe as some kind of add-on to battery replacement services and such like. I'd guess it's probably too low value given the work involved, which is a shame.
- tw04 8y ago
  There was - cyanogenmod. Then they got greedy, screwed most of their open source contributors, and were dumb enough to actually claim they were going to take out Android. End results was Google pulling more and more out of the base OS to prevent anyone from ever really forking android again, as well as cyanogenmod leadership screwing several OEM partners (oneplus in India), and they're basically dead now. The community is still there but it seems like it took a massive hit after that debacle.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    These days, PostmarketOS is trying to support those older devices, and in a way that actually takes out Android! ...out of the device I mean, haha. But IIRC, most devices that CM used to run on, only had 512MB of RAM-- and that's honestly not enough to even browse the web on nowadays. (Many of them are also on earlier flavors of ARM that would be a bit harder to support natively, with e.g. Alpine having dropped support for anything earlier than ARM7.)
pjmlp 8y ago
Because the large majority of the non-technical consumers doesn't care one second about them. In fact, I know many people that disable updates on their phones, because they are afraid of the apps not looking the same after an update takes place.

captainbland 8y ago

I wonder if there's viable market in keeping old phones up to date, maybe as some kind of add-on to battery replacement services and such like. I'd guess it's probably too low value given the work involved, which is a shame.

tw04 8y ago
There was - cyanogenmod. Then they got greedy, screwed most of their open source contributors, and were dumb enough to actually claim they were going to take out Android. End results was Google pulling more and more out of the base OS to prevent anyone from ever really forking android again, as well as cyanogenmod leadership screwing several OEM partners (oneplus in India), and they're basically dead now. The community is still there but it seems like it took a massive hit after that debacle.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  These days, PostmarketOS is trying to support those older devices, and in a way that actually takes out Android! ...out of the device I mean, haha. But IIRC, most devices that CM used to run on, only had 512MB of RAM-- and that's honestly not enough to even browse the web on nowadays. (Many of them are also on earlier flavors of ARM that would be a bit harder to support natively, with e.g. Alpine having dropped support for anything earlier than ARM7.)

pjmlp 8y ago

Because the large majority of the non-technical consumers doesn't care one second about them. In fact, I know many people that disable updates on their phones, because they are afraid of the apps not looking the same after an update takes place.