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> Just like all Pixel devices, Pixel 4 will continue to get software and security updates for at least 3 years from when the device first became available on th

> Just like all Pixel devices, Pixel 4 will continue to get software and security updates for at least 3 years from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the U.S. This is something I just don't understand. As phones get more powerful, there is absolutely no excuse to not support them for longer. When did the standard for supporting consumer devices get so low? Love it or hate it, Apple still supports the iPhone 6s Plus. A phone which is almost 5 years old now.

Markoff 6y ago
just buy phone with unlockable bootloader and good custom ROM community and you can have this even now, just not officially from manufacturer anyway in Pixel case the phone will have already after 2 years completely unusable battery, not that it would be satisfactory for heavy user even out of box
- pizza234 6y ago
  "Just not officially" is a simplistic view. You don't know how long the phone is still going to be supported, and you have to have the skills and the patience to go through unofficial documents and procedures in order to make the whole process work. I know because I'm in this situation, and I do support this approach (to "fight against the market"), but it's not an easy feat.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  My pixel 3 XL, which is coming up on 2 years old, gets me through the day just fine on the original battery.
  - Markoff 6y ago
    well yeah, if you don't use your phone it can get you even through two days, turned off even longer
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      Not sure what that statement has to do with anything, but good point I guess?
      - Markoff 6y ago
        > gets me through the day just fine just because it gets YOU through the day, doesn't mean it gets others, people use phones differently, for starters their phones have different Screen on Time per day, so while 1-2 hours is fine for you and gets you through the day, for others 7hrs is not enough and phone will die for them before dinner
        Godel_unicode 6y ago
        I average 6 hours of screen on time, easily lasts the whole day. You should be careful talking about the performance of a phone you haven't used, I don't know if you've heard but people on Reddit sometimes don't tell the truth...
- timwaagh 6y ago
  just try that on a modern pixel and you are quite likely to introduce unstable behavior. its really not recommended
ISL 6y ago
I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010. Perpetual donations to debian and apt update; apt dist-upgrade keep it in tip-top shape. The same cannot be said for a growing drawer of phones/tablets that are no longer supported/updated. (I was glad to see that partial postmarketos support is present for at least some of those devices now. Looking forward to trying that out when I get a chance.)
- dehrmann 6y ago
  To be fair, x86 Debian will happily run on a Pentium II from 1998.
  - akerro 6y ago
    Yes, I still have AMD Duron 800 which runs on Linux
  - mrguyorama 6y ago
    "Happily" is a stretch. I ran Damn Small Linux (because puppy actually wouldn't fit) on a 233mhz pentium II, with 32mb of RAM and it was..... semi functional (including allowing the USB 1.0 ports on the motherboard to work!) but multitasking or complex tasks caused it to hard lock up and I was too young and uneducated to diagnose the problems
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      I think my 440BX motherboard supported up to 384 MB of RAM--that would have helped a lot. You can still get PCI SATA controllers for fast swap. You're still capped at 133 MBps because of PCI, but PC100 RAM only runs at 800 MBps, anyway. What's amazing about the PII is it's the oldest "modern" computer in a few ways. USB came out around the same time, and i686 is the oldest x86 architecture still supported by modern distros out-of-the-box. i686 will be 25 years old in November. The fact that it's still supported is incredible.
- deelowe 6y ago
  Is all of the hardware in that desktop still supported by the vendors? I'd imagine not. Go check the ram compatibility list for the motherboard and see when the newest module was manufactured. This is always the first thing that gets dropped from support.
ta1234567890 6y ago
I'm still using an iPhone 6 and it works great. Nowadays 5 years is really not that old for a phone. Phone manufacturers should release the specs and/or an open source version of the phone's os so people can provide their own support.
- dudul 6y ago
  I would be interested in seeing data on that. When you say "5 years is not that old" it can be read as "a 5 year old phone works just fine" and I fully agree with that, but it may be considered old in the sense that not many 5 year old phones are in use today. Do a lot of people ignore their carrier's emails about upgrading at the expiration of the contract? I know I do, but I always assumed most people just upgraded almost right away to the new version.
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
- philg_jr 6y ago
  The OS isn't the problem. The binary blobs from Qualcomm is the real problem.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    This is the massive advantage of rolling your own silicon.
- andredz 6y ago
  Right, mine works fine as well. So you think that Apple should release the specs for the latests iOS that works with the iPhone 6?
  - ta1234567890 6y ago
    That would be great. But it would also be great if they just released the specs/code of the first version of iOS that worked with any older-than-5 phone. I still run iOS 10.3 on mine, and really don't care about the latest one, probably would run very slow anyway.
jeremyjh 6y ago
I love my 6s. I got a new battery last year and it still works great. I don't expect support to last a whole lot longer but the SE is not a very expensive replacement. I just don't want to give up my headphone jack.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- valuearb 6y ago
  Just bought my daughter the new SE for her birthday. It’s amazing for the price!
jneplokh 6y ago
People love to hate (which seems justified on the surface) on Apple's high prices, but the unparalleled years of support makes it worth it for me. Especially for phones like the SE.
- tw04 6y ago
  As someone who has bounced back and forth between iPhone and Android over the years: my hate hasn't seemed to have been fixed over the years. Sure Apple will push updates for 5 years, but after about 3 years somehow the latest update makes the phone so slow as to be unusable. It's happened to me with every iPhone I've owned (3G, 6, and I guess we'll see on the latest).
  - skellera 6y ago
    The newest phones are so overpowered for their actual use. They should last years. The only thing will be switching out batteries from time to time.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - jonathanlydall 6y ago
    I'm using iPhone 6S with latest iOS and no issues with performance. Although I did replace the battery last year for about 800ZAR (~$45) from a certified Apple repairs company.
  - FreakyT 6y ago
    I've heard that was the case for some of the older devices, but they're really gotten better at it. I'm currently using an OG iPhone SE (a 4 year old phone) and I'm running iOS 14 beta and it runs great.
  - alyandon 6y ago
    If it helps ease your concerns any - my current work issued phone is the lowest end iPhone 6S model and it is still running fine to this day on latest iOS. Granted, the 6S is a pretty significant spec bump up from the iPhone 6. The performance of my personal Pixel 2 on the other hand has not held up nearly as well by comparison and my next personal phone will likely be an iPhone even though I'm not a great fan of Apple.
blck 6y ago
I've always heard that it's the SoC that doesn't get updated after X number of years so Google is supposedly limited by how much support Snapdragon is willing to give their SoC.
- hellcow 6y ago
  Google is one of the richest companies in the world. If they wanted to, they could demand updates for longer periods or just create their own chips. It's just not a priority for them.
Guest19023892 6y ago
I was thinking the same thing the other day. I just updated my parents' computers (which are 10 years old) to Windows 10. They still work great for their needs and they're up-to-date. I'm running a 7 year old ultrabook also on Windows 10. I'm planning to upgrade this year, but at least it's secure with the latest updates. I feel like we've been able to get a ton of use from these devices. Meanwhile, I have a Samsung Note 2 phone which is 8 years old. It's fast enough for what I do (browse the internet for 10 minutes a day, send a dozen WhatsApp messages, book an Uber). That thing was released in 2012 and could no longer upgrade to new Android releases in 2014. That's pathetic. I need to replace it this year, not because it's too slow, but because it's insecure and no longer supported by anything. I was going to buy a smart scale the other day, but the app doesn't support my Android version. Also wanted an app for syncing the time with my Bluetooth GShock. Not supported. Sonos speakers? Not supported. It's a garbage phone now not because of the hardware, but because of the lack of support.
- exmadscientist 6y ago
  You're talking about three different classes of device: PCs, phones, and IoT (IoS)/deep embedded. Embedded development is hard. Really hard. And much of that difficulty is intrinsic to the problem space, so it isn't going away anytime soon. But much of it is just embedded developers being masochists and embedded tool developers being sadists. For phones, the pain is probably 90% avoidable. 90 percent! No, I don't know why we live with it either. The reason your phone is different than your PC is that the PC's OS has all the drivers for everything built in, then loads whichever drivers your specific machine needs. Embedded Linux images are built specific to one model of hardware, with weird crappy OEM-provided drivers baked in and nowhere else available. It doesn't _have_ to be this way. But it is. So to support your phone, the vendor basically maintains a custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process. And that's done more or less independently for every model they're supporting. It's a huge headache! Why deep embedded is this way is a little more understandable. (It's also where I prefer to work if I'm doing software; I don't like embedded Linux. It's just not my thing. So if I'm wrong when talking about it, that's why.) Deep embedded is often working with very limited hardware, custom circuits, and general strangeness. It also can serve the industrial, automotive, or medical markets, which naturally tend to longer product cycles. So the product is generally less standard, meaning it makes more sense (at least to me) why the support flow is so bespoke.
scottlamb 6y ago
I agree they could and should be supported for longer, but regarding your comparison to Apple: > Love it or hate it, Apple still supports the iPhone 6s Plus. A phone which is almost 5 years old now. You're comparing what Google guarantees up-front for all devices to what Apple has done for the one device. Did Apple give a guaranteed support date for the iPhone 6s Plus at launch? In a quick search, I couldn't find one. I did find articles (eg [1]) from January speculating if Apple would include the iPhone 6S in the iOS 14 update or not. Google still may support the Pixel 4 for longer than three years. edit: forgot to add the disclaimer earlier that I'm a Google employee. I don't work on Android or hardware. [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/ios/story/don-t-ditch-your-iphone-6s-and-iphone-se-yet-apple-might-update-it-with-ios-14-later-this-year-1640902-2020-01-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/ios/story/don-t-ditch-y...
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Apple has a sufficient track record that speaks for itself.
- Sidnicious 6y ago
  Apple considers a product "vintage" five years and "obsolete" seven years after the last one is sold: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
  - scottlamb 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks! That covers hardware service/parts. Do they have a matching policy for software updates, at least security-related ones?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Actions speak louder than words. 10+ years of supporting iPhones and continuously increasing the service life of them says a lot more than a marketing promise.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  When you say Google guarantees support up front (like a benefit), what you'll really find is that's a guarantee support ends on that timeline. Apple (in my observation) tends not to say what length of support will be given, but offers it well beyond when an average person would throw away a device 2-3x over. When Google says 3 years guaranteed, you can be damned sure you're done at 3 years.
treis 6y ago
I think it's a combination of two things: (1) Battery life goes down while wear and tear build up. After ~3 years you are looking at spending money replacing a battery for a banged up phone. Or you can spend another $200 and get a new phone. (2) Cameras are still getting better. Going from a Pixel to the Pixel 3 was a phenomenal upgrade in the camera.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  > Or you can spend another $200 and get a new phone. I'd guess people aren't replacing a ~$500 phone with a ~$200 phone, but I get your point. Who wants to replace the battery on a phone worse less that the battery?
  - treis 6y ago
    >I'd guess people aren't replacing a ~$500 phone with a ~$200 phone That's fair. I buy used/refurbished 1 model behind the current flagship. For me it was ~$140 more to get a lightly used 3 XL than replacing my battery.
neya 6y ago
Planned obsolescence. I owned an iPhone 5S, my phone terribly slowed down in just a year to the point of becoming unusable. Opening the camera app would take 10 seconds. It would randomly freeze during calls and in the end, started having random shut downs. At the time, I didn't know they were throttling the phone. Funnily enough, my battery was replaced a couple of times and had no impact. I paid $1000 at the time for it. I wrote it off in a year and a half due to all these issues. The manufacturer DID support with updates, but in the end, it didn't really matter because they just kept introducing more bugs and did nothing to address the throttling until very recently when they were caught in the act. In contrast, I still own an Android 2.x HTC Desire that works flawlessly as a backup phone till date. I got it 8 years ago and is absolutely stunning - be it the beautiful OLED display or usability, and solves my needs perfectly. I would say, software support for older phones is overrated. If you thought I am lucky with the HTC, then how about my other Android - Xperia X. I've dropped this thing so many times and not once had the screen gotten a single scratch. Supports dual sim and camera is great for low light. Still fluid to use. Again, software support for long term is really overrated in my opinion. As long as you can make calls, surf the web, check emails, take photos, I'd say the purpose of the phone is complete.
- jordache 6y ago
  your anecdote is in direct contrast to mine. My 5S is still very usable. -Download offline google maps files on it and use it as a gps in my car. Smooth as butter map animation and everything. -Use it when I'm doing yard work, Podcasts, audiobooks.. The latest overcast app is a little bit hiccupy.. but very usable. -Take pictures with it once in a while... Still on original battery... On the latest iOS that Apple is currently supporting the 5S with.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  The throttling didn’t happen until later, and was dependent on battery health. If you were having issues in the first year it wasn’t the throttling it was probably another issue with the device. I had an iPad like that and was able to get it replaced with the same generation and then-current OS, any issues like yours disappeared with the new hardware.
- 6y ago
necheffa 6y ago
Some of it has to do with hardware vendors like Qualcomm refusing to support older chipsets with newer kernels, or you know, just open sourcing their drivers. My pixel 1 is basically stuck on a 3.18 kernel forever, even if I go and compile AOSP myself, because of Qualcomm's nom-free drivers. At a certain point, companies like Google have to decide how much they want to backport fixes to older systems. Apparently they've decided on 3 years.
- kevincox 6y ago
  Yup, it is hard to commit to a long security patch lifetime if you can't patch around bugs in major hardware components.
  - MBCook 6y ago
    If only Google could make their own phone or phone OS so they were in control over these kind of issues. Wait... These are issues totally within their control. These excuses shouldn’t be acceptable.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      I'm not saying that Google couldn't make their own processor but it is a serious undertaking. I don't think we can scoff at them for not doing it yet. Even in their datacenters they use third party CPUs. It's not surprising that they haven't made their own for phones.
      - mywittyname 6y ago
        I think Google should start because I think the long-term viability of Android depends on it. They don't even need to design the chips themselves. They could partner with Samsung / LG / Motorola to form a hardware consortium.
        kevincox 6y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised if they have started. They have only been in the phone game for ~4 years which I imagine is quite quick to get a custom CPU into a shipping product.
pvarangot 6y ago
My life is a tiny bit more active than your average gym/yoga rat and phones last me around 2 years. That's consistent across something like 10 years now. - One got stolen - Two broke while hiking/kayaking - One was a lemon and the battery started working funny after a year and a half, it's one of the pixels that came with a high capacity battery and the replacement one is lower capacity so I didn't risk spending money on servicing it I'm on my fifth phone now.
Sidnicious 6y ago
Apple has support statuses for discontinued products which kick in five years ("vintage") and seven years ("obsolete") after the it stops being sold. It's disingenuous for Google to start counting when the product is released. As the buyer, I don't care when it was released, I care when you sold it to me as new. I could buy a Chromecast Ultra (the current-generation 4K Chromecast, released November 2016: https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_ultra https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_ultra) and, by this standard (which may not even apply to Chromecasts, FWIW), they could discontinue it and drop support for it tomorrow.
- kps 6y ago
  > Apple has support statuses for discontinued products which kick in five years ("vintage") and seven years ("obsolete") after the it stops being sold. That doesn't mean OS support. Apple sold the iPhone 6 until September 2018¹ but it did not get iOS 13 only one year later. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6
drewg123 6y ago
I'm an xoogler who has only owned Google Nexus and Pixel phones until recently when I switched to iPhone. The primary reason I switched was the limited support window that Google has for its phones.
- culopatin 6y ago
  Google and Microsoft lost me when I built a hackintosh on a Thinkpad X1 and my iPhone from work started syncing with it without me doing anything at all. Handoff, personal Hotspot, Airdrop, iMessage, continuity and all that working automatically is something google is very far from achieving with Microsoft. I’ll keep a windows desktop for gaming, but once Apple settles down through its processor changes I might just get a personal iPhone and a MacBook Pro
cdumler 6y ago
If it means anything to you, the reason why is: Google stack ranks employees regularly. Lowest of a group is always fired. Doesn't matter how good you are or how much satisfaction you give to your customers, you're basically asked, "what have you built that could be the next billion customer thing?" If you're not answering how you're part of the next big thing, you're going to lose. So, once something is acquired or released, consider it deprecated.
- scottlamb 6y ago
  This isn't true. I've worked at Google for 13 years and have rarely seen someone fired for performance; it's certainly not automatic based on being at the bottom of a stack rank. Other companies have or had such a system [1] but Google never has. The sliver of truth is that Google's once-or-twice-yearly performance evaluation system asks colleagues to stack rank folks they are reviewing. I wish they'd get rid of it, but it's not used for much. It's only a partial order of folks they're reviewing, nothing really enforces that people actually do it, I suspect some people just rank all the people trying for promo this cycle above the people who aren't, and the many reviewers' stack ranks are never reconciled into one authoritative stack rank of the folks in a group. I don't know why it's still around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
- dbspin 6y ago
  This appears to be incorrect - https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-stack-rank-its-employees-despite-the-high-rate-of-disapproval-and-controversy-within-the-company https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-stack-rank-its-employe... I think you may be confusing the stack ranking at google, that doesn't result in dismissal (Google were in fact, right up until Covid, still on a hiring spree with a shortage of engineers); with what Microsoft historically did (and stopped doing in 2013).
- markstos 6y ago
  Stack ranking only contributes to planned obsolescence if the company values decisions which contribute to it. If the company high prioritized environmental concerns, stack ranking would reward those who figured how to keep products in service longer.
whereistimbo 6y ago
Blame Qualcomm. I'm sure this issue doesn't exist in Windows 10 ARM. This might change if Google-Samsung Exynos partnership came into fruition, so Google uses its own chip for its own phones
- hn_check 6y ago
  "Blame Qualcomm" This seems incredibly dubious as an excuse (for a variety of technical and business reasons), but has been the Google get out of jail card for a decade+ now. More likely Google loses interest, the devices no longer make them any money and they want to wipe their hands of them.
eitland 6y ago
I switched to Apple last year. It is now possible to use a decent[0] 3rd party keyboard on them and the XR is actually not that expensive compared to a number of other phones. And for the first time since Samsung SII I'm happy with my phone :-) [0]: the Apple keyboard doesn't support autocomplete while showing Norwegian letters, and it is also hilariously bad it seems wrt autocorrecting correctly spelled sentences into embarrassing ones and even going as far as autocorrecting one medicine name to another at some point. On SwiftKey one can at least turn of autocorrect.
- pragmatic 6y ago
  Third party keyboards don't seem to work well land are always getting reset to the standard one. (On my iPad). User error?
  - eitland 6y ago
    I had to disable the built in to stop that from happening. Not user error. Bad QA from Apple and/or third party keyboard.
  - zantana 6y ago
    On my iphone the problem is solved by restarting the app. My assumption was either the keyboard or the app updated and lost contact with the other, but I find killing the app solves the problem.
shirakawasuna 6y ago
This why I will only ever use a smartphone with LineageOS (formerly CyanogenMod). Supported until your phone dies, putting aside the firmware. Unfortunately, you have no options at all for having a modicum of control / openness over your firmware if you want to use a smartphone. Gotta use/build your own odd device if you want that.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  LineageOS is NOT guaranteed to be supported until your phone dies. The Lineage OS devs have repeatedly stated that builds are maintained by volunteers, and if the dev responsible for one phone model loses interest in that job or loses his own phone of that model, he can quit maintaining it at any time, and the community has no right to complain. Because Android development is such an arcane science, usually no one else steps in to pick up an abandoned phone model once the original developer has quit.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  My phone, an non flagship brand was supported by lineage when it was still being sold and used. Now as main android support has gone, so has the users and so has lineage support. I think it's the same for the majority of android phones. Only the phones with the longest vendor support also get the longest lineageos support. Other phones are out of luck from any angle.
seebetter 6y ago
It's called fraud. Or an aggressive business model that is fair only to the top 10% of customers who are not concerned with spending $250 per month in effective charges to have a wireless handheld computer with 4G.
bdcravens 6y ago
Obviously they want people to buy more often. For most top-tier devices most are probably bought on payments and generally speaking those customers can get a new phone every 12 months if they assume they’ll always have that smallish monthly payment.
djanogo 6y ago
I constantly get down voted when I say iPhone is the cheapest and most secure mobile device you can buy. "Price is what you pay, value is what you get" -you know who.
- fsflover 6y ago
  It is only most secure if you undoubtedly trust Apple with everything and do not need to run any software except what they allow.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  iOS exploits are cheaper to buy than Android exploits because iOS exploits are so plentiful.
fsflover 6y ago
This is exactly why people created Pinephone and Librem 5 with lifelong updates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5
- Multicomp 6y ago
  I'm so there with the Pinephone as soon as that slide out keyboard comes out.
aaomidi 6y ago
Major issue here is Qualcomm and the fact that Google has no power over them
hocuspocus 6y ago
It isn't entirely fair to compare iOS and Android update models. A lot of stuff on Android is delivered directly by the Play store/services, for many years after the end of OS updates for a particular device.
e40 6y ago
It makes iPhones look cheaper, given you don't have to replace them as often. I expect to keep my 11 for more than 5 years, which will make that $800 price less painful.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Today’s phones are cheap. Even expensive phones are cheaper than their wireless service contracts in the US. A good rule of thumb is they depreciate about 50% in their first two years (at least for iPhones). That means your $800 phone is costing you less than $20/month: A $1400 phone less than $30/month. Right now I’m paying over $40/month each for service for four phones right now.
  - e40 6y ago
    I pay around $65 for service on 3 phones with Google Fi. But, I'm lucky, I live in an area where it works just fine. Many people live in Verizon-only country, and that's not cheap.
mdm_ 6y ago
I was watching a review of the Pixel 4a on YouTube last night in which the reviewer likes the Pixel 4a and calls the iPhone SE “trash” in comparison because it has bezels. Nevermind that the iPhone will run circles around the 4a in terms of performance and probably receive OS updates for 2-3 years after the 4a is EOL’ed. But no, bezels = “trash”.
- entropea 6y ago
  A significant portion of phone users are there for aesthetics and status. Those same people are unlikely to have a phone past 1-2 years after paying it off with their carrier.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    I haven't noticed the phone status thing in years. Everyone covers their phones with gigantic cases and phone design is largely generic anymore. So it's pretty hard to tell who has the latest one.
    - entropea 6y ago
      iPhones have the largest amount of cases and commidity accessories, so cases and their designs are also a status and aesthetics thing.
- hocuspocus 6y ago
  I've watched many Pixel 4a and OnePlus Nord reviews and they get compared against the SE a lot, yet I haven't heard anyone calling it trash. You should probably stick to more reputable YouTubers. Also the form factor and screen to size ratio are very important criteria for a lot of people, if not the most.
valuearb 6y ago
My iPhone 5s is 7 years old and tho it can’t be updated to the latest iOS, still gets security updates.
harrygeez 6y ago
To be fair, one of the reasons is Apple sells their old flagships as "mid-tier" options
kelnos 6y ago
> This is something I just don't understand. As phones get more powerful, there is absolutely no excuse to not support them for longer. From our perspective, sure. From the manufacturers perspective, it costs money to port, build, and test new releases. And if people are happy with their up-to-date 5-year-old phone, they'll be less likely to buy the latest shiny new one. Not saying those are good excuses -- they're explicitly customer-hostile -- but they're completely understandable.
theodric 6y ago
My freshly-reinstalled Pixel 2 XL with a minimal app load has four goddamn gigabytes of RAM and can't even manage to run my podcast player in the background without killing it after 5-30 minutes to economize on resources, despite my having turned off every optimization function on the device. That's why. The software is garbage, and it necessitates an upgrade treadmill to keep pace. It's PCs in the 90s all over again!
ksec 6y ago
>This is something I just don't understand. Bump up the price of Pixel by additional $100, and you get an 5 years guarantee upgrade. Not to mention the Pixel isn't that powerful. iPhone 6s despite being 5 years ago, is probably as fast or still faster than some of the sub $300 Android Phone released today. ( Excluding Chinese Brands )
HumblyTossed 6y ago
Not sure if it still is this way, but Qualcomm used to stop supporting their chipsets after a couple years. Apple makes their own, so...

Markoff 6y ago

just buy phone with unlockable bootloader and good custom ROM community and you can have this even now, just not officially from manufacturer anyway in Pixel case the phone will have already after 2 years completely unusable battery, not that it would be satisfactory for heavy user even out of box

pizza234 6y ago
"Just not officially" is a simplistic view. You don't know how long the phone is still going to be supported, and you have to have the skills and the patience to go through unofficial documents and procedures in order to make the whole process work. I know because I'm in this situation, and I do support this approach (to "fight against the market"), but it's not an easy feat.
Godel_unicode 6y ago
My pixel 3 XL, which is coming up on 2 years old, gets me through the day just fine on the original battery.
- Markoff 6y ago
  well yeah, if you don't use your phone it can get you even through two days, turned off even longer
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    Not sure what that statement has to do with anything, but good point I guess?
    - Markoff 6y ago
      > gets me through the day just fine just because it gets YOU through the day, doesn't mean it gets others, people use phones differently, for starters their phones have different Screen on Time per day, so while 1-2 hours is fine for you and gets you through the day, for others 7hrs is not enough and phone will die for them before dinner
      - Godel_unicode 6y ago
        I average 6 hours of screen on time, easily lasts the whole day. You should be careful talking about the performance of a phone you haven't used, I don't know if you've heard but people on Reddit sometimes don't tell the truth...
timwaagh 6y ago
just try that on a modern pixel and you are quite likely to introduce unstable behavior. its really not recommended

ISL 6y ago

I believe I purchased my present desktop in 2010. Perpetual donations to debian and apt update; apt dist-upgrade keep it in tip-top shape. The same cannot be said for a growing drawer of phones/tablets that are no longer supported/updated. (I was glad to see that partial postmarketos support is present for at least some of those devices now. Looking forward to trying that out when I get a chance.)

dehrmann 6y ago
To be fair, x86 Debian will happily run on a Pentium II from 1998.
- akerro 6y ago
  Yes, I still have AMD Duron 800 which runs on Linux
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  "Happily" is a stretch. I ran Damn Small Linux (because puppy actually wouldn't fit) on a 233mhz pentium II, with 32mb of RAM and it was..... semi functional (including allowing the USB 1.0 ports on the motherboard to work!) but multitasking or complex tasks caused it to hard lock up and I was too young and uneducated to diagnose the problems
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    I think my 440BX motherboard supported up to 384 MB of RAM--that would have helped a lot. You can still get PCI SATA controllers for fast swap. You're still capped at 133 MBps because of PCI, but PC100 RAM only runs at 800 MBps, anyway. What's amazing about the PII is it's the oldest "modern" computer in a few ways. USB came out around the same time, and i686 is the oldest x86 architecture still supported by modern distros out-of-the-box. i686 will be 25 years old in November. The fact that it's still supported is incredible.
deelowe 6y ago
Is all of the hardware in that desktop still supported by the vendors? I'd imagine not. Go check the ram compatibility list for the motherboard and see when the newest module was manufactured. This is always the first thing that gets dropped from support.

ta1234567890 6y ago

I'm still using an iPhone 6 and it works great. Nowadays 5 years is really not that old for a phone. Phone manufacturers should release the specs and/or an open source version of the phone's os so people can provide their own support.

dudul 6y ago
I would be interested in seeing data on that. When you say "5 years is not that old" it can be read as "a 5 year old phone works just fine" and I fully agree with that, but it may be considered old in the sense that not many 5 year old phones are in use today. Do a lot of people ignore their carrier's emails about upgrading at the expiration of the contract? I know I do, but I always assumed most people just upgraded almost right away to the new version.
Godel_unicode 6y ago
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
philg_jr 6y ago
The OS isn't the problem. The binary blobs from Qualcomm is the real problem.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  This is the massive advantage of rolling your own silicon.
andredz 6y ago
Right, mine works fine as well. So you think that Apple should release the specs for the latests iOS that works with the iPhone 6?
- ta1234567890 6y ago
  That would be great. But it would also be great if they just released the specs/code of the first version of iOS that worked with any older-than-5 phone. I still run iOS 10.3 on mine, and really don't care about the latest one, probably would run very slow anyway.

jeremyjh 6y ago

I love my 6s. I got a new battery last year and it still works great. I don't expect support to last a whole lot longer but the SE is not a very expensive replacement. I just don't want to give up my headphone jack.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
valuearb 6y ago
Just bought my daughter the new SE for her birthday. It’s amazing for the price!

jneplokh 6y ago

People love to hate (which seems justified on the surface) on Apple's high prices, but the unparalleled years of support makes it worth it for me. Especially for phones like the SE.

tw04 6y ago
As someone who has bounced back and forth between iPhone and Android over the years: my hate hasn't seemed to have been fixed over the years. Sure Apple will push updates for 5 years, but after about 3 years somehow the latest update makes the phone so slow as to be unusable. It's happened to me with every iPhone I've owned (3G, 6, and I guess we'll see on the latest).
- skellera 6y ago
  The newest phones are so overpowered for their actual use. They should last years. The only thing will be switching out batteries from time to time.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jonathanlydall 6y ago
  I'm using iPhone 6S with latest iOS and no issues with performance. Although I did replace the battery last year for about 800ZAR (~$45) from a certified Apple repairs company.
- FreakyT 6y ago
  I've heard that was the case for some of the older devices, but they're really gotten better at it. I'm currently using an OG iPhone SE (a 4 year old phone) and I'm running iOS 14 beta and it runs great.
- alyandon 6y ago
  If it helps ease your concerns any - my current work issued phone is the lowest end iPhone 6S model and it is still running fine to this day on latest iOS. Granted, the 6S is a pretty significant spec bump up from the iPhone 6. The performance of my personal Pixel 2 on the other hand has not held up nearly as well by comparison and my next personal phone will likely be an iPhone even though I'm not a great fan of Apple.

blck 6y ago

I've always heard that it's the SoC that doesn't get updated after X number of years so Google is supposedly limited by how much support Snapdragon is willing to give their SoC.

hellcow 6y ago
Google is one of the richest companies in the world. If they wanted to, they could demand updates for longer periods or just create their own chips. It's just not a priority for them.

Guest19023892 6y ago

I was thinking the same thing the other day. I just updated my parents' computers (which are 10 years old) to Windows 10. They still work great for their needs and they're up-to-date. I'm running a 7 year old ultrabook also on Windows 10. I'm planning to upgrade this year, but at least it's secure with the latest updates. I feel like we've been able to get a ton of use from these devices. Meanwhile, I have a Samsung Note 2 phone which is 8 years old. It's fast enough for what I do (browse the internet for 10 minutes a day, send a dozen WhatsApp messages, book an Uber). That thing was released in 2012 and could no longer upgrade to new Android releases in 2014. That's pathetic. I need to replace it this year, not because it's too slow, but because it's insecure and no longer supported by anything. I was going to buy a smart scale the other day, but the app doesn't support my Android version. Also wanted an app for syncing the time with my Bluetooth GShock. Not supported. Sonos speakers? Not supported. It's a garbage phone now not because of the hardware, but because of the lack of support.

exmadscientist 6y ago
You're talking about three different classes of device: PCs, phones, and IoT (IoS)/deep embedded. Embedded development is hard. Really hard. And much of that difficulty is intrinsic to the problem space, so it isn't going away anytime soon. But much of it is just embedded developers being masochists and embedded tool developers being sadists. For phones, the pain is probably 90% avoidable. 90 percent! No, I don't know why we live with it either. The reason your phone is different than your PC is that the PC's OS has all the drivers for everything built in, then loads whichever drivers your specific machine needs. Embedded Linux images are built specific to one model of hardware, with weird crappy OEM-provided drivers baked in and nowhere else available. It doesn't _have_ to be this way. But it is. So to support your phone, the vendor basically maintains a custom-patched kernel with a bizarre build process. And that's done more or less independently for every model they're supporting. It's a huge headache! Why deep embedded is this way is a little more understandable. (It's also where I prefer to work if I'm doing software; I don't like embedded Linux. It's just not my thing. So if I'm wrong when talking about it, that's why.) Deep embedded is often working with very limited hardware, custom circuits, and general strangeness. It also can serve the industrial, automotive, or medical markets, which naturally tend to longer product cycles. So the product is generally less standard, meaning it makes more sense (at least to me) why the support flow is so bespoke.

scottlamb 6y ago

I agree they could and should be supported for longer, but regarding your comparison to Apple: > Love it or hate it, Apple still supports the iPhone 6s Plus. A phone which is almost 5 years old now. You're comparing what Google guarantees up-front for all devices to what Apple has done for the one device. Did Apple give a guaranteed support date for the iPhone 6s Plus at launch? In a quick search, I couldn't find one. I did find articles (eg [1]) from January speculating if Apple would include the iPhone 6S in the iOS 14 update or not. Google still may support the Pixel 4 for longer than three years. edit: forgot to add the disclaimer earlier that I'm a Google employee. I don't work on Android or hardware. [1] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/ios/story/don-t-ditch-your-iphone-6s-and-iphone-se-yet-apple-might-update-it-with-ios-14-later-this-year-1640902-2020-01-28 https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/ios/story/don-t-ditch-y...

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Apple has a sufficient track record that speaks for itself.
Sidnicious 6y ago
Apple considers a product "vintage" five years and "obsolete" seven years after the last one is sold: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
- scottlamb 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks! That covers hardware service/parts. Do they have a matching policy for software updates, at least security-related ones?
ogre_codes 6y ago
Actions speak louder than words. 10+ years of supporting iPhones and continuously increasing the service life of them says a lot more than a marketing promise.
supernova87a 6y ago
When you say Google guarantees support up front (like a benefit), what you'll really find is that's a guarantee support ends on that timeline. Apple (in my observation) tends not to say what length of support will be given, but offers it well beyond when an average person would throw away a device 2-3x over. When Google says 3 years guaranteed, you can be damned sure you're done at 3 years.

treis 6y ago

I think it's a combination of two things: (1) Battery life goes down while wear and tear build up. After ~3 years you are looking at spending money replacing a battery for a banged up phone. Or you can spend another $200 and get a new phone. (2) Cameras are still getting better. Going from a Pixel to the Pixel 3 was a phenomenal upgrade in the camera.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago
> Or you can spend another $200 and get a new phone. I'd guess people aren't replacing a ~$500 phone with a ~$200 phone, but I get your point. Who wants to replace the battery on a phone worse less that the battery?
- treis 6y ago
  >I'd guess people aren't replacing a ~$500 phone with a ~$200 phone That's fair. I buy used/refurbished 1 model behind the current flagship. For me it was ~$140 more to get a lightly used 3 XL than replacing my battery.

neya 6y ago

Planned obsolescence. I owned an iPhone 5S, my phone terribly slowed down in just a year to the point of becoming unusable. Opening the camera app would take 10 seconds. It would randomly freeze during calls and in the end, started having random shut downs. At the time, I didn't know they were throttling the phone. Funnily enough, my battery was replaced a couple of times and had no impact. I paid $1000 at the time for it. I wrote it off in a year and a half due to all these issues. The manufacturer DID support with updates, but in the end, it didn't really matter because they just kept introducing more bugs and did nothing to address the throttling until very recently when they were caught in the act. In contrast, I still own an Android 2.x HTC Desire that works flawlessly as a backup phone till date. I got it 8 years ago and is absolutely stunning - be it the beautiful OLED display or usability, and solves my needs perfectly. I would say, software support for older phones is overrated. If you thought I am lucky with the HTC, then how about my other Android - Xperia X. I've dropped this thing so many times and not once had the screen gotten a single scratch. Supports dual sim and camera is great for low light. Still fluid to use. Again, software support for long term is really overrated in my opinion. As long as you can make calls, surf the web, check emails, take photos, I'd say the purpose of the phone is complete.

jordache 6y ago
your anecdote is in direct contrast to mine. My 5S is still very usable. -Download offline google maps files on it and use it as a gps in my car. Smooth as butter map animation and everything. -Use it when I'm doing yard work, Podcasts, audiobooks.. The latest overcast app is a little bit hiccupy.. but very usable. -Take pictures with it once in a while... Still on original battery... On the latest iOS that Apple is currently supporting the 5S with.
Jtsummers 6y ago
The throttling didn’t happen until later, and was dependent on battery health. If you were having issues in the first year it wasn’t the throttling it was probably another issue with the device. I had an iPad like that and was able to get it replaced with the same generation and then-current OS, any issues like yours disappeared with the new hardware.
6y ago

necheffa 6y ago

Some of it has to do with hardware vendors like Qualcomm refusing to support older chipsets with newer kernels, or you know, just open sourcing their drivers. My pixel 1 is basically stuck on a 3.18 kernel forever, even if I go and compile AOSP myself, because of Qualcomm's nom-free drivers. At a certain point, companies like Google have to decide how much they want to backport fixes to older systems. Apparently they've decided on 3 years.

kevincox 6y ago
Yup, it is hard to commit to a long security patch lifetime if you can't patch around bugs in major hardware components.
- MBCook 6y ago
  If only Google could make their own phone or phone OS so they were in control over these kind of issues. Wait... These are issues totally within their control. These excuses shouldn’t be acceptable.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    I'm not saying that Google couldn't make their own processor but it is a serious undertaking. I don't think we can scoff at them for not doing it yet. Even in their datacenters they use third party CPUs. It's not surprising that they haven't made their own for phones.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      I think Google should start because I think the long-term viability of Android depends on it. They don't even need to design the chips themselves. They could partner with Samsung / LG / Motorola to form a hardware consortium.
      - kevincox 6y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised if they have started. They have only been in the phone game for ~4 years which I imagine is quite quick to get a custom CPU into a shipping product.

pvarangot 6y ago

My life is a tiny bit more active than your average gym/yoga rat and phones last me around 2 years. That's consistent across something like 10 years now. - One got stolen - Two broke while hiking/kayaking - One was a lemon and the battery started working funny after a year and a half, it's one of the pixels that came with a high capacity battery and the replacement one is lower capacity so I didn't risk spending money on servicing it I'm on my fifth phone now.

Sidnicious 6y ago

Apple has support statuses for discontinued products which kick in five years ("vintage") and seven years ("obsolete") after the it stops being sold. It's disingenuous for Google to start counting when the product is released. As the buyer, I don't care when it was released, I care when you sold it to me as new. I could buy a Chromecast Ultra (the current-generation 4K Chromecast, released November 2016: https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_ultra https://store.google.com/us/product/chromecast_ultra) and, by this standard (which may not even apply to Chromecasts, FWIW), they could discontinue it and drop support for it tomorrow.

kps 6y ago
> Apple has support statuses for discontinued products which kick in five years ("vintage") and seven years ("obsolete") after the it stops being sold. That doesn't mean OS support. Apple sold the iPhone 6 until September 2018¹ but it did not get iOS 13 only one year later. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6

drewg123 6y ago

I'm an xoogler who has only owned Google Nexus and Pixel phones until recently when I switched to iPhone. The primary reason I switched was the limited support window that Google has for its phones.

culopatin 6y ago
Google and Microsoft lost me when I built a hackintosh on a Thinkpad X1 and my iPhone from work started syncing with it without me doing anything at all. Handoff, personal Hotspot, Airdrop, iMessage, continuity and all that working automatically is something google is very far from achieving with Microsoft. I’ll keep a windows desktop for gaming, but once Apple settles down through its processor changes I might just get a personal iPhone and a MacBook Pro

cdumler 6y ago

If it means anything to you, the reason why is: Google stack ranks employees regularly. Lowest of a group is always fired. Doesn't matter how good you are or how much satisfaction you give to your customers, you're basically asked, "what have you built that could be the next billion customer thing?" If you're not answering how you're part of the next big thing, you're going to lose. So, once something is acquired or released, consider it deprecated.

scottlamb 6y ago
This isn't true. I've worked at Google for 13 years and have rarely seen someone fired for performance; it's certainly not automatic based on being at the bottom of a stack rank. Other companies have or had such a system [1] but Google never has. The sliver of truth is that Google's once-or-twice-yearly performance evaluation system asks colleagues to stack rank folks they are reviewing. I wish they'd get rid of it, but it's not used for much. It's only a partial order of folks they're reviewing, nothing really enforces that people actually do it, I suspect some people just rank all the people trying for promo this cycle above the people who aren't, and the many reviewers' stack ranks are never reconciled into one authoritative stack rank of the folks in a group. I don't know why it's still around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve
dbspin 6y ago
This appears to be incorrect - https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-stack-rank-its-employees-despite-the-high-rate-of-disapproval-and-controversy-within-the-company https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Google-stack-rank-its-employe... I think you may be confusing the stack ranking at google, that doesn't result in dismissal (Google were in fact, right up until Covid, still on a hiring spree with a shortage of engineers); with what Microsoft historically did (and stopped doing in 2013).
markstos 6y ago
Stack ranking only contributes to planned obsolescence if the company values decisions which contribute to it. If the company high prioritized environmental concerns, stack ranking would reward those who figured how to keep products in service longer.

whereistimbo 6y ago

Blame Qualcomm. I'm sure this issue doesn't exist in Windows 10 ARM. This might change if Google-Samsung Exynos partnership came into fruition, so Google uses its own chip for its own phones

hn_check 6y ago
"Blame Qualcomm" This seems incredibly dubious as an excuse (for a variety of technical and business reasons), but has been the Google get out of jail card for a decade+ now. More likely Google loses interest, the devices no longer make them any money and they want to wipe their hands of them.

eitland 6y ago

I switched to Apple last year. It is now possible to use a decent[0] 3rd party keyboard on them and the XR is actually not that expensive compared to a number of other phones. And for the first time since Samsung SII I'm happy with my phone :-) [0]: the Apple keyboard doesn't support autocomplete while showing Norwegian letters, and it is also hilariously bad it seems wrt autocorrecting correctly spelled sentences into embarrassing ones and even going as far as autocorrecting one medicine name to another at some point. On SwiftKey one can at least turn of autocorrect.

pragmatic 6y ago
Third party keyboards don't seem to work well land are always getting reset to the standard one. (On my iPad). User error?
- eitland 6y ago
  I had to disable the built in to stop that from happening. Not user error. Bad QA from Apple and/or third party keyboard.
- zantana 6y ago
  On my iphone the problem is solved by restarting the app. My assumption was either the keyboard or the app updated and lost contact with the other, but I find killing the app solves the problem.

shirakawasuna 6y ago

This why I will only ever use a smartphone with LineageOS (formerly CyanogenMod). Supported until your phone dies, putting aside the firmware. Unfortunately, you have no options at all for having a modicum of control / openness over your firmware if you want to use a smartphone. Gotta use/build your own odd device if you want that.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
LineageOS is NOT guaranteed to be supported until your phone dies. The Lineage OS devs have repeatedly stated that builds are maintained by volunteers, and if the dev responsible for one phone model loses interest in that job or loses his own phone of that model, he can quit maintaining it at any time, and the community has no right to complain. Because Android development is such an arcane science, usually no one else steps in to pick up an abandoned phone model once the original developer has quit.
thinkingemote 6y ago
My phone, an non flagship brand was supported by lineage when it was still being sold and used. Now as main android support has gone, so has the users and so has lineage support. I think it's the same for the majority of android phones. Only the phones with the longest vendor support also get the longest lineageos support. Other phones are out of luck from any angle.

seebetter 6y ago

It's called fraud. Or an aggressive business model that is fair only to the top 10% of customers who are not concerned with spending $250 per month in effective charges to have a wireless handheld computer with 4G.

bdcravens 6y ago

Obviously they want people to buy more often. For most top-tier devices most are probably bought on payments and generally speaking those customers can get a new phone every 12 months if they assume they’ll always have that smallish monthly payment.

djanogo 6y ago

I constantly get down voted when I say iPhone is the cheapest and most secure mobile device you can buy. "Price is what you pay, value is what you get" -you know who.

fsflover 6y ago
It is only most secure if you undoubtedly trust Apple with everything and do not need to run any software except what they allow.
heavyset_go 6y ago
iOS exploits are cheaper to buy than Android exploits because iOS exploits are so plentiful.

fsflover 6y ago

This is exactly why people created Pinephone and Librem 5 with lifelong updates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

Multicomp 6y ago
I'm so there with the Pinephone as soon as that slide out keyboard comes out.

aaomidi 6y ago

Major issue here is Qualcomm and the fact that Google has no power over them

hocuspocus 6y ago

It isn't entirely fair to compare iOS and Android update models. A lot of stuff on Android is delivered directly by the Play store/services, for many years after the end of OS updates for a particular device.

e40 6y ago

It makes iPhones look cheaper, given you don't have to replace them as often. I expect to keep my 11 for more than 5 years, which will make that $800 price less painful.

valuearb 6y ago
Today’s phones are cheap. Even expensive phones are cheaper than their wireless service contracts in the US. A good rule of thumb is they depreciate about 50% in their first two years (at least for iPhones). That means your $800 phone is costing you less than $20/month: A $1400 phone less than $30/month. Right now I’m paying over $40/month each for service for four phones right now.
- e40 6y ago
  I pay around $65 for service on 3 phones with Google Fi. But, I'm lucky, I live in an area where it works just fine. Many people live in Verizon-only country, and that's not cheap.

mdm_ 6y ago

I was watching a review of the Pixel 4a on YouTube last night in which the reviewer likes the Pixel 4a and calls the iPhone SE “trash” in comparison because it has bezels. Nevermind that the iPhone will run circles around the 4a in terms of performance and probably receive OS updates for 2-3 years after the 4a is EOL’ed. But no, bezels = “trash”.

entropea 6y ago
A significant portion of phone users are there for aesthetics and status. Those same people are unlikely to have a phone past 1-2 years after paying it off with their carrier.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I haven't noticed the phone status thing in years. Everyone covers their phones with gigantic cases and phone design is largely generic anymore. So it's pretty hard to tell who has the latest one.
  - entropea 6y ago
    iPhones have the largest amount of cases and commidity accessories, so cases and their designs are also a status and aesthetics thing.
hocuspocus 6y ago
I've watched many Pixel 4a and OnePlus Nord reviews and they get compared against the SE a lot, yet I haven't heard anyone calling it trash. You should probably stick to more reputable YouTubers. Also the form factor and screen to size ratio are very important criteria for a lot of people, if not the most.

valuearb 6y ago

My iPhone 5s is 7 years old and tho it can’t be updated to the latest iOS, still gets security updates.

harrygeez 6y ago

To be fair, one of the reasons is Apple sells their old flagships as "mid-tier" options

kelnos 6y ago

> This is something I just don't understand. As phones get more powerful, there is absolutely no excuse to not support them for longer. From our perspective, sure. From the manufacturers perspective, it costs money to port, build, and test new releases. And if people are happy with their up-to-date 5-year-old phone, they'll be less likely to buy the latest shiny new one. Not saying those are good excuses -- they're explicitly customer-hostile -- but they're completely understandable.

theodric 6y ago

My freshly-reinstalled Pixel 2 XL with a minimal app load has four goddamn gigabytes of RAM and can't even manage to run my podcast player in the background without killing it after 5-30 minutes to economize on resources, despite my having turned off every optimization function on the device. That's why. The software is garbage, and it necessitates an upgrade treadmill to keep pace. It's PCs in the 90s all over again!

ksec 6y ago

>This is something I just don't understand. Bump up the price of Pixel by additional $100, and you get an 5 years guarantee upgrade. Not to mention the Pixel isn't that powerful. iPhone 6s despite being 5 years ago, is probably as fast or still faster than some of the sub $300 Android Phone released today. ( Excluding Chinese Brands )

HumblyTossed 6y ago

Not sure if it still is this way, but Qualcomm used to stop supporting their chipsets after a couple years. Apple makes their own, so...