I'll leave my anecdote until someone knowledgeable shows up. I don't they they've been doing nearly enough. I've been using a cheap Asus (MSM8916 + 2 GiB RAM) f

I'll leave my anecdote until someone knowledgeable shows up. I don't they they've been doing nearly enough. I've been using a cheap Asus (MSM8916 + 2 GiB RAM) for about 4.5 years and have tried every version of Android from 5 through 10 (most of them via CyanogenMod / LineageOS). I always trim down the firmware on my devices as much as possible without bricking it, and still one feels the phone getting slower and slower with every version increment. 7 is the last one more or less usable on this kind of hardware, and 10 really struggles to run and leaves very little RAM for applications to use. So, even if my vendor didn't stop releasing updates so soon, a less patient user would've tossed the phone right after Nougat was released. (BTW, fuck you Asus, I'll never buy from you again)