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> It runs Android 12 and will be supported for three years of monthly security updates and two major Android version upgrades. And that's why I stick to iPhone

> It runs Android 12 and will be supported for three years of monthly security updates and two major Android version upgrades. And that's why I stick to iPhones for long-lasting devices, those two major versions are a joke. Apple has the crown with seven on the iPhone 6S. When will someone make Android phones other than Pixels with non-abysmal software support? Yes, I know you can install alternate ROMs on your phone, but this is not what the general public does, especially with a phone at this price point. The average joe will definitely change his phone after three years when they cannot install whatsapp or messenger or their banking app anymore. That said, kudos to Nokia for entering this market, I genuinely hope it will be profitable enough for them to keep it up!

rock_artist 4y ago
Also Pixels usually gets less official OS iterations than iPhones. Only nice thing on Android is the aftermarket ROMs since it's AOSP. Sadly from my experience the aftermarket ROMs for newer OS iterations arent polished or miss features that the OEM roms had.
- camhart 4y ago
  Less official?
  - xnyan 4y ago
    They meant fewer, as in "Android gets fewer official OS iterations than iPhone."
  - nortonham 4y ago
    what they mean is iPhones receive updates (OS upgrades and security updates) and are officially supported by Apple for a longer period of time than any Android phone. The Google Pixel receives new android versions and security updates for a longer period of time than any other android phone, but that's fewer than the equivalent iPhone
duxup 4y ago
Yeah my wife’s old iPhone 8 Plus still gets updates, still runs. Many of my android devices from that time are dead, no more updates, and/or borderline unusable due to random android slowdown performance issues. In fact running across that old phone is what convinced me to switch.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Yep, that's the lifecycle of iPhones. I usually get the latest and greatest from work every 2 years. Then I pay a nominal fee to get it for myself (because of taxes or accounting or something). I get a new phone from the company, my old one goes to my SO. Their old one goes either to my kid or to mine or my SO's parents, depending on which part of the lifecycle they are at. Can't do that with Android, the 5-6 year old ones would be so bad and out of date that I wouldn't want to be the one doing tech support for them.
- Moldoteck 4y ago
  Not to dismiss, but I have a pixel 3, still snappy, android 12. It was released 1 year after iphone 8 if I'm not mistaken, but still, it's about ~5 years from today
gandalfian 4y ago
Though I'm on android 9? Five year old phone and while I'm not a power user nothing seems to care? Apple apps are much more picky of versions.
- thrashh 4y ago
  What Apple apps? I just went from an iPhone 10 (6 years old) to 14 last week and I didn’t have any change in my apps.
  - b1ue64 4y ago
    The difference here is that an iPhone X (damn, that came out 6 years ago?) is still supported
  - throwaway472919 4y ago
    I guess what they meant is that third-party apps are much stricter on iOS (at least partly because Apple updates faster and for longer, probably). I was on Android 8 (2017) until recently without any issues, whereas iOS apps only seem to support 1-2 versions back generally. Plus the Safari rendering engine doesn't update independently so you can't fall back to the web.
  - circuit10 4y ago
    That's because the iPhone 10 is still being supported so you likely have the latest iOS version
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Security is a complicated matter; you only realize you should have cared when it's too late.
pjmlp 4y ago
iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when the hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS versions. I only change phones when they die in some form, so 300 euros every 5 years on average is more than enough, I am not buying phones with laptop prices. I have anyway access to Apple devices via project assignments in consulting projects.
- eropple 4y ago
  > iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when the hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS versions. Not really, and definitely not with more modern ones. I have an iPhone 11 from 2019. It was released with iOS 13. It is now running iOS 16.1.1. It is as snappy as the day I bought it. I'm considering a phone upgrade, but that's because of the improved camera, not performance (or even battery life). My old iPhone 8 (2017) is still getting updates, and now is moderately pokey with nontrivial apps, but the OS is fine. And I get it with regards to apps, as the perf and battery improvements between the A11 and the A13 chips was pretty significant.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    I wasn't talking about the modern ones, naturally they still aren't old enough to suffer from that. As you tell yourself, the iPhone 8 isn't its former self with its original iOS version.
    - eropple 4y ago
      It's also six years old and where it's pokey tends to be apps, not the OS. The browser, mostly. Turns out we all like to write a lot of JavaScript, I guess? Even if that weren't the case, a six-year-old iPhone 8 has out-survived the useful, secure life of, what, every Android device not made directly by Google? Hell, a 3.5-year-old iPhone 11 has out-survived the useful, secure life of the overwhelming majority of Android devices, too. And, further, given that A11->A13 was the most significant period of perf improvement and energy reductions (the A14/A15 are moderately faster but the tail certainly appears to be here), that bodes well for its continuing usefulness.
therealasdf 4y ago
Samsung offers 5 years of support.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Certain models and only starting last year. So an improvement, yet still requires one do research.
secondcoming 4y ago
My current Nokia phone has 3 years of support
y-c-o-m-b 4y ago
> when they cannot install whatsapp or messenger or their banking app anymore. Hyperbole much? That's a ridiculous claim. I've been sporting a "renewed" Samsung S10E since early 2021. There's still nothing it can't do. Prior to that I owned a Galaxy S7 since 2016! That's a 5 whole years without any phone issues on an Android phone. I turned on the S7 a few months back and after an update, all the apps still work.
- fdaryfdyfgd 4y ago
  that's at least 3 years each using a phone with absolutely no security updates to network, wifi, cryptolibs, html/js engine etc. not that iphone are any better. you have zero idea what you get on a new ios for old devices since the binaries are not the same. only thing you can be certain is the extra slow down loop
  - piperswe 4y ago
    The HTML/JS engine does get updated, it's contained in a component called "Android System WebView" on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.webview&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
    - kyriakos 4y ago
      A big benefit of Android, its modular and bits and pieces can be updated independently. Part of the reason iPhones require to have long term OS support is the fact that their browser would otherwise be stuck at an old version.
      - IshKebab 4y ago
        You have it backwards. In the early days Android didn't have any components in the Play Store and Apple still provided updates for much much longer than Android manufacturers. Google moved the web browser component to the Play Store because Android's OS updates are so bad. They had no choice but to do it. Apple could do it too if they wanted to but they don't need to because they actually provide OS updates for a decent period.
ck2 4y ago
It will likely be running LineageOS (formerly Cyanogenmod) for a decade to come.
input_sh 4y ago
Fairphone that's mentioned in the article has 7 years of support (IIRC). Never used it though, my last 3 phones were all from Nokia. It's pretty much the only manufacturer that still releases new stock (Android One) models regularly. (Excluding too-expensive-for-my-taste Pixels and some Motorolas I could never find in my country).
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > and some Motorolas I could never find in my country Hm? Writing this on g30 and Motos aren't popular here for years. Edit: like I bought the cheapest Samsung last year and the experience is night and day.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    G30 isn't an Android One phone. Android One = nearly the same stock Android you'd get on a Pixel, no (non-Google) bloatware, no custom UI. It was never quite popular, but if you scroll through the Wikipedia list of devices (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One), you'll see it's pretty much only Nokia nowadays. Some Motorola models as well, but I couldn't find those specific models back when they were still new and I was looking for a phone.
    - justsomehnguy 4y ago
      Honestly modern Motos are as close to the stock A. as you can get. Not really sure about E4, flashed it to LOS pretty soon, but g8 and, now, g30 has a minimal Moto integrations and some are actually useful, eg on g30 I finally adopted MotoActions (flash by chop-chop and camera by uugh doggo shake? lol) despite ignoring them for years, since XT720/RAZR. With g30 I even left the default launcher, it is good enough that I didn't bother.
kyriakos 4y ago
£149.99 with 3 years of software updates + repairable sounds good enough to me.
bg24 4y ago
I am an iPhone user. Irrespective of software update, the device gets really slow at 3yrs mark, forcing me to change. So I do not know if supporting a phone software for >3yrs is a good idea or just marketing.
nabakin 4y ago
Small to medium Android phone manufacturers need to team up and support a single ROM instead of maintaining individual flavors like this which only last for a few years.
amelius 4y ago
Yes, I had to throw away my perfectly capable phone because my banking app refused to work at some point because the version of Android was too old and the phone stopped supporting newer versions of Android. Edit: not sarcastic, 100% serious.
- cvalka 4y ago
  Security updates are a must. Without them it's not a usable device
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    Not everyone cares about security updates.
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      > Not everyone cares about security updates. OK. But surely banks ought to. If you care about having a banking app, then you ought to care transitively.
      - amelius 4y ago
        Banks don't care about security. See e.g. credit cards where the numbers are just printed in plain sight for everyone to copy them.
        throwaway744678 4y ago
        It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand. Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and purchases something, you can charge it back. The vendor is supporting the risk, not you.
        amelius 4y ago
        > It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand. If you buy something in a store, you have no certainty that your CC number doesn't end in the hands of store personnel. > Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and purchases something, you can charge it back. You have to keep an eye on it. It is easy to overlook if the amount small is enough. All in all, I wouldn't call this good security practice.
Zigurd 4y ago
It's the oems fault in this case. And they have no excuse. Google has modified the architecture of Android to make it possible for oems to update as quickly as possible, as well as all of the previous efforts to enable updating user-facing features without updating the OS. But it's all still a kludge compared to iOS. The bottom line is I don't think this is solvable with technology. Google should have gotten much tougher with OEMs once Android got widely accepted.
- duxup 4y ago
  I agree about it being impossible to solve the update issues with tech. There are too many benefits for the OEMs to dump phones on the market and not update. No reason to care otherwise so far, sadly.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  They had their chance with Project Treble, and took the decision to make updates optional and not a requirement for Play Store contracts, so naturally nothing changed. The Android team is the one to blame, several times on Android Fireside sessions they have answered that they rather have the fragementation of the ecosystem where partners are allowed to experiment and come up with new ideas. Well one of the ideas is to sell newer devices instead of free beer upgrades, with Google's complacency. I still rather be on Android, because even with them screwing up Sun and leaving it to implode, I like that they push a managed OS no matter what. Those that unaccept it and keep diving into the NDK with GL based UIs, always get a few scars in the process.

rock_artist 4y ago

Also Pixels usually gets less official OS iterations than iPhones. Only nice thing on Android is the aftermarket ROMs since it's AOSP. Sadly from my experience the aftermarket ROMs for newer OS iterations arent polished or miss features that the OEM roms had.

camhart 4y ago
Less official?
- xnyan 4y ago
  They meant fewer, as in "Android gets fewer official OS iterations than iPhone."
- nortonham 4y ago
  what they mean is iPhones receive updates (OS upgrades and security updates) and are officially supported by Apple for a longer period of time than any Android phone. The Google Pixel receives new android versions and security updates for a longer period of time than any other android phone, but that's fewer than the equivalent iPhone

duxup 4y ago

Yeah my wife’s old iPhone 8 Plus still gets updates, still runs. Many of my android devices from that time are dead, no more updates, and/or borderline unusable due to random android slowdown performance issues. In fact running across that old phone is what convinced me to switch.

theshrike79 4y ago
Yep, that's the lifecycle of iPhones. I usually get the latest and greatest from work every 2 years. Then I pay a nominal fee to get it for myself (because of taxes or accounting or something). I get a new phone from the company, my old one goes to my SO. Their old one goes either to my kid or to mine or my SO's parents, depending on which part of the lifecycle they are at. Can't do that with Android, the 5-6 year old ones would be so bad and out of date that I wouldn't want to be the one doing tech support for them.
Moldoteck 4y ago
Not to dismiss, but I have a pixel 3, still snappy, android 12. It was released 1 year after iphone 8 if I'm not mistaken, but still, it's about ~5 years from today

gandalfian 4y ago

Though I'm on android 9? Five year old phone and while I'm not a power user nothing seems to care? Apple apps are much more picky of versions.

thrashh 4y ago
What Apple apps? I just went from an iPhone 10 (6 years old) to 14 last week and I didn’t have any change in my apps.
- b1ue64 4y ago
  The difference here is that an iPhone X (damn, that came out 6 years ago?) is still supported
- throwaway472919 4y ago
  I guess what they meant is that third-party apps are much stricter on iOS (at least partly because Apple updates faster and for longer, probably). I was on Android 8 (2017) until recently without any issues, whereas iOS apps only seem to support 1-2 versions back generally. Plus the Safari rendering engine doesn't update independently so you can't fall back to the web.
- circuit10 4y ago
  That's because the iPhone 10 is still being supported so you likely have the latest iOS version
rhn_mk1 4y ago
Security is a complicated matter; you only realize you should have cared when it's too late.

pjmlp 4y ago

iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when the hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS versions. I only change phones when they die in some form, so 300 euros every 5 years on average is more than enough, I am not buying phones with laptop prices. I have anyway access to Apple devices via project assignments in consulting projects.

eropple 4y ago
> iPhones drag to a crawl after a couple of OS updates when the hardware is no longer up to the stuff of the latest iOS versions. Not really, and definitely not with more modern ones. I have an iPhone 11 from 2019. It was released with iOS 13. It is now running iOS 16.1.1. It is as snappy as the day I bought it. I'm considering a phone upgrade, but that's because of the improved camera, not performance (or even battery life). My old iPhone 8 (2017) is still getting updates, and now is moderately pokey with nontrivial apps, but the OS is fine. And I get it with regards to apps, as the perf and battery improvements between the A11 and the A13 chips was pretty significant.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  I wasn't talking about the modern ones, naturally they still aren't old enough to suffer from that. As you tell yourself, the iPhone 8 isn't its former self with its original iOS version.
  - eropple 4y ago
    It's also six years old and where it's pokey tends to be apps, not the OS. The browser, mostly. Turns out we all like to write a lot of JavaScript, I guess? Even if that weren't the case, a six-year-old iPhone 8 has out-survived the useful, secure life of, what, every Android device not made directly by Google? Hell, a 3.5-year-old iPhone 11 has out-survived the useful, secure life of the overwhelming majority of Android devices, too. And, further, given that A11->A13 was the most significant period of perf improvement and energy reductions (the A14/A15 are moderately faster but the tail certainly appears to be here), that bodes well for its continuing usefulness.

therealasdf 4y ago

Samsung offers 5 years of support.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Certain models and only starting last year. So an improvement, yet still requires one do research.

secondcoming 4y ago

My current Nokia phone has 3 years of support

y-c-o-m-b 4y ago

> when they cannot install whatsapp or messenger or their banking app anymore. Hyperbole much? That's a ridiculous claim. I've been sporting a "renewed" Samsung S10E since early 2021. There's still nothing it can't do. Prior to that I owned a Galaxy S7 since 2016! That's a 5 whole years without any phone issues on an Android phone. I turned on the S7 a few months back and after an update, all the apps still work.

fdaryfdyfgd 4y ago
that's at least 3 years each using a phone with absolutely no security updates to network, wifi, cryptolibs, html/js engine etc. not that iphone are any better. you have zero idea what you get on a new ios for old devices since the binaries are not the same. only thing you can be certain is the extra slow down loop
- piperswe 4y ago
  The HTML/JS engine does get updated, it's contained in a component called "Android System WebView" on the Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.webview&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
  - kyriakos 4y ago
    A big benefit of Android, its modular and bits and pieces can be updated independently. Part of the reason iPhones require to have long term OS support is the fact that their browser would otherwise be stuck at an old version.
    - IshKebab 4y ago
      You have it backwards. In the early days Android didn't have any components in the Play Store and Apple still provided updates for much much longer than Android manufacturers. Google moved the web browser component to the Play Store because Android's OS updates are so bad. They had no choice but to do it. Apple could do it too if they wanted to but they don't need to because they actually provide OS updates for a decent period.

ck2 4y ago

It will likely be running LineageOS (formerly Cyanogenmod) for a decade to come.

input_sh 4y ago

Fairphone that's mentioned in the article has 7 years of support (IIRC). Never used it though, my last 3 phones were all from Nokia. It's pretty much the only manufacturer that still releases new stock (Android One) models regularly. (Excluding too-expensive-for-my-taste Pixels and some Motorolas I could never find in my country).

justsomehnguy 4y ago
> and some Motorolas I could never find in my country Hm? Writing this on g30 and Motos aren't popular here for years. Edit: like I bought the cheapest Samsung last year and the experience is night and day.
- input_sh 4y ago
  G30 isn't an Android One phone. Android One = nearly the same stock Android you'd get on a Pixel, no (non-Google) bloatware, no custom UI. It was never quite popular, but if you scroll through the Wikipedia list of devices (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One), you'll see it's pretty much only Nokia nowadays. Some Motorola models as well, but I couldn't find those specific models back when they were still new and I was looking for a phone.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    Honestly modern Motos are as close to the stock A. as you can get. Not really sure about E4, flashed it to LOS pretty soon, but g8 and, now, g30 has a minimal Moto integrations and some are actually useful, eg on g30 I finally adopted MotoActions (flash by chop-chop and camera by uugh doggo shake? lol) despite ignoring them for years, since XT720/RAZR. With g30 I even left the default launcher, it is good enough that I didn't bother.

kyriakos 4y ago

£149.99 with 3 years of software updates + repairable sounds good enough to me.

bg24 4y ago

I am an iPhone user. Irrespective of software update, the device gets really slow at 3yrs mark, forcing me to change. So I do not know if supporting a phone software for >3yrs is a good idea or just marketing.

nabakin 4y ago

Small to medium Android phone manufacturers need to team up and support a single ROM instead of maintaining individual flavors like this which only last for a few years.

amelius 4y ago

Yes, I had to throw away my perfectly capable phone because my banking app refused to work at some point because the version of Android was too old and the phone stopped supporting newer versions of Android. Edit: not sarcastic, 100% serious.

cvalka 4y ago
Security updates are a must. Without them it's not a usable device
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  Not everyone cares about security updates.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > Not everyone cares about security updates. OK. But surely banks ought to. If you care about having a banking app, then you ought to care transitively.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Banks don't care about security. See e.g. credit cards where the numbers are just printed in plain sight for everyone to copy them.
      - throwaway744678 4y ago
        It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand. Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and purchases something, you can charge it back. The vendor is supporting the risk, not you.
        amelius 4y ago
        > It's supposed to never leave your pocket or your hand. If you buy something in a store, you have no certainty that your CC number doesn't end in the hands of store personnel. > Besides, if someone gets your credit card number and purchases something, you can charge it back. You have to keep an eye on it. It is easy to overlook if the amount small is enough. All in all, I wouldn't call this good security practice.

Zigurd 4y ago

It's the oems fault in this case. And they have no excuse. Google has modified the architecture of Android to make it possible for oems to update as quickly as possible, as well as all of the previous efforts to enable updating user-facing features without updating the OS. But it's all still a kludge compared to iOS. The bottom line is I don't think this is solvable with technology. Google should have gotten much tougher with OEMs once Android got widely accepted.

duxup 4y ago
I agree about it being impossible to solve the update issues with tech. There are too many benefits for the OEMs to dump phones on the market and not update. No reason to care otherwise so far, sadly.
pjmlp 4y ago
They had their chance with Project Treble, and took the decision to make updates optional and not a requirement for Play Store contracts, so naturally nothing changed. The Android team is the one to blame, several times on Android Fireside sessions they have answered that they rather have the fragementation of the ecosystem where partners are allowed to experiment and come up with new ideas. Well one of the ideas is to sell newer devices instead of free beer upgrades, with Google's complacency. I still rather be on Android, because even with them screwing up Sun and leaving it to implode, I like that they push a managed OS no matter what. Those that unaccept it and keep diving into the NDK with GL based UIs, always get a few scars in the process.