2 ms·

I dunno how things are now, but a few years back duration of updates were certainly linked to first release, not last sale, for at least most major manufacturer

I dunno how things are now, but a few years back duration of updates were certainly linked to first release, not last sale, for at least most major manufacturers. As an example of this: In April 2019, I needed to rapidly obtain a device, and purchased a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) from a major retailer in Australia. I later discovered that this model had already been EOL for over a year when I purchased it. (It was released with 5.1.1, got its last security patch in November 2017, and was actively unsupported no later than March 2018. The handset should very obviously have been updated to Android 6, if not released with it—Android 6 was announced and in beta 7½ months before, and was the stable release 3½ months before, the handset’s January 2016 release.)

olliej 4y ago
That's the choice of the manufacturer. If a company is selling something and says "X years of support", that means X years of support, not "until date Y" where Y is date of release + X. If android manufacturers are saying "X years of support" when they mean "supported until [some date]" then they are quite plainly false advertising. I can find many sites that say that apple commits to 5 years of software support from the date of last sale, but I can't find anything on apple.com that matches that. I've found that they guarantee 5 years of hardware support (repairs, etc) from date of last sale, and then a further 2 years subject to hardware availability (presumably they stop purchasing/manufacturing parts). Note that I'm not talking about warrantee coverage (which varies but seems 1 year is standard?) just the actual ability to do repairs. Based on this article and various others over the years, and the vast array of spammy infographic laden sites making up the first page of google search results, it seems like claims of ~5 years of major updates and a few more for security only is consistent, but again I can't find anything on apple's site to confirm that explicitly.

olliej 4y ago

That's the choice of the manufacturer. If a company is selling something and says "X years of support", that means X years of support, not "until date Y" where Y is date of release + X. If android manufacturers are saying "X years of support" when they mean "supported until [some date]" then they are quite plainly false advertising. I can find many sites that say that apple commits to 5 years of software support from the date of last sale, but I can't find anything on apple.com that matches that. I've found that they guarantee 5 years of hardware support (repairs, etc) from date of last sale, and then a further 2 years subject to hardware availability (presumably they stop purchasing/manufacturing parts). Note that I'm not talking about warrantee coverage (which varies but seems 1 year is standard?) just the actual ability to do repairs. Based on this article and various others over the years, and the vast array of spammy infographic laden sites making up the first page of google search results, it seems like claims of ~5 years of major updates and a few more for security only is consistent, but again I can't find anything on apple's site to confirm that explicitly.