Here's a "win-win" scheme which benefits both consumers as well as manufacturers/retailers without running up the costs for either: mandate the release of a dev

Here's a "win-win" scheme which benefits both consumers as well as manufacturers/retailers without running up the costs for either: mandate the release of a device tree for all devices at least a year before the last vendor-supplied update so the users can migrate to any AOSP-derived distribution - LineageOS being the most well-known. The device tree should be complete, i.e. it needs to contain any needed drivers in either source (preferable) or blob form so the device will continue to be fully functional when used with a third-party distribution. Doing this will drastically increase the useable life span of devices by mostly removing software obsolescence as a factor. Hardware will still age, performance will eventually lag too far behind current devices but seeing as how I'm using several devices from around 2010 (Motorola Defy/Defy+) for specific tasks those 7 years can easily be extended without any additional cost to either vendor or consumer.