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I think this is fantastic news. It will be interesting to see how it affects the amount of phones that get discarded. I think the next bottleneck is likely to

I think this is fantastic news. It will be interesting to see how it affects the amount of phones that get discarded. I think the next bottleneck is likely to be software longevity. This has improved a lot lately! But basically I think phones have now reached a place like laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years any more. I wonder if regulators said "your software has to get security updates for 10 years" would that be enough to get mobile SoC vendors upstreaming their HW support and Google streamlining the Android update process? (To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it).

microtonal 3y ago
The second proposed legislation from the article seems to require that at least 5 years of updates must be provided after the device was last sold. This is far more than many low-end and mid-range Android phones, moreover many Android phone manufacturers start counting after the device was released, not last sold. Interestingly, they also seem to put upper bounds on how quickly these updates should be rolled out. Eg. functionality updates must be rolled out within 6 months after another phone from the same brand has that update. So eg. if Samsung makes Android 12 available on their flagship phone, they also need to make it available within 6 months on the other phones that were sold to up to 5 years ago. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12797-Designing-mobile-phones-and-tablets-to-be-sustainable-ecodesign_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa... This is such an improvement over the status quo.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  Is it? It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released, and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower. To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released That's perfectly ok, what you don't have you can't use. > and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower. It would be up to the manufacturers to ensure that this is not the case. One way to do it would be to reduce bloat. > To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more. This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase more then surely someone will exploit that.
    - madeofpalk 3y ago
      Maybe it'll play out differently on the low-end, but on the high-end it seems there's been some "soft collusion" where one manufacturer raised prices, and others saw that as a signal they can also raise their prices.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Yes, that is a problem, but that's a different kind of regulation (anti-trust). The EU also tends to be pretty good at busting such things, but they take their sweet time to do it.
      - benj111 3y ago
        In the low end, surely you'd get more standardisation. Same processor, screen, Bluetooth and mobile chips. So that from an update pov it's easy. They can always differentiate with cameras, batteries, cases etc.
        sroussey 3y ago
        So a communist phone for the lower class? That’s the not-nice way of saying the same thing. I’m not sure if I am for or against that without more thought.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put out new models at a high cadence. This in turn should make for better parts availability since the window that any given model is manufactured in is wider. It'd also incentivize sharing parts between models where possible. All in all, positive for the end consumer. It might've been a problem in the earlier days of smartphones, but the category has more or less plateaued by now and so the benefit of high model churn with each new model sharing little with its predecessor is dubious at best.
  - theluketaylor 3y ago
    Or it actually accelerates the model pumping. If the software has to be supported for 5 years after it’s last on sale there could be a perverse incentive to roll SKUs like crazy even if there are not any actual changes so you only have to support for the shortest possible time.
    - mschild 3y ago
      That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers currently offer.
      - sverhagen 3y ago
        Sure it would be, but I think the implied point above was that including the period the device is sold (what's that? say three years), the total support time is much closer to the ten years that was being discussed up top, and pumping out more new devices may shorten that back to closer to five years.
        happymellon 3y ago
        Does having 3 devices that you are supporting for 10 years make more work than 10 devices you support for 5? Because while that doesn't make sense in my head, I could easily see that being the methodology used by the Android device manufacturers.
- kevincox 3y ago
  I would love if this software support needed to be printed on the box. Sort of like EnerGuide or the Nutrition Facts. Feature updates: N years, Security Updates: M years ... This way consumers can actually try to factor in the lifetime of the device when purchasing. Oh this device costs 10% more but will get security updates for 2/3 longer, so it is actually more economical. Then if the company doesn't comply with the label they need to provide full refunds or a replacement that will get updates.
pizza234 3y ago
In my experience, the current bottleneck with (Android) phones is that the get very slow without any apparent reasons after a few years. I've had multiple reports of acquaintances complaining about their phones getting slow after a few years, and I've always assumed that they were just full of apps... until it happened to me. I can't find an unambiguois explanation; my guess is a mix of CPUs deteriorating over time due to heating, and disks due to cell degradation, but it's certainly a mystery.
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago
  That interpretation is incredibly generous to the companies that benefit from you feeling a need to replace that phone.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It's not a mystery at all. Planned obsolescence is a thing and manufacturers have all kinds of perverse incentives to ensure that your perfectly serviceable phone gets traded in for a newer model.
  - palata 3y ago
    I like to call it "premature obsolescence". I don't believe that the manufacturers actively try to make your old phone get slower. Rather the opposite: they don't try to keep your old phone working. The devs probably have the latest phone, and write code that works well with them. This code can be inefficient, as long as it works well on the newer phone, even if it makes older phones slower. Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think it is different: it is _not_ that manufacturers actively pay their devs to make the phones slower (which would be planned obsolescence), but rather they _do not pay_ the devs to make sure the old phones _do not get slower_. The latter is "passive", that's (to me) premature obsolescence: the manufacturer could fight premature obsolescence, but it has a cost (and obviously they don't want to pay for it).
    - noirscape 3y ago
      There's some degree of active involvement with this. I've long suspected Apple to do this for example. The best version of iOS for any iDevice is usually the one just before the one that they use as the hard cutoff point. Granted, my big example of this is quite old (the iPhone 4 would run iOS 6 really well, while on iOS 7 it was a glitchy, slow, battery-draining mess) but it does seem to be a common trend (my last Apple phone, the iPhone 5 ran quite well on iOS 9 but would just have a complete breakdown if you installed iOS 10). They were IIRC also caught red-handed a couple times deliberately releasing updates to older iDevices that would just wreck their battery life and have a few lawsuits pending about that.
scarface_74 3y ago
> But basically I think phones have now reached a place like laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years any more. Unless you care about your phone working as a phone. 2G was discontinued years ago, 3G is rapidly being dropped by the carriers and how much longer before 4G is discontinued? > streamlining the Android update process? (To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it). What exactly is Google doing? Apple released a security update for the 2013 iPhone 5s earlier this year.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Even in your example you point out that 3G "is being rapidly dropped" but it's not dead yet. The iPhone 3G came out in 2008. So just today, 15 years later, it would still work on most networks (certainly I can still use 3G in Australia).
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  3G is alive and well in IoT.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    All of the US carriers are shutting down 3G. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-affect-your-phone#:~:text=All%20of%20the%20major%20US,system%2C%20or%20even%20your%20car https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-aff....
    - PeterStuer 3y ago
      What I implied was it might not be a big thing for smartphones, but there are a lot of IoT devices out there that will fail the 3G sunset.
- Freeaqingme 3y ago
  Then there's still wifi of course. Admittedly, a phone without cellular connections is less useful, but it could still be used to function like a tablet that's simply kept at home etc.
phh 3y ago
> To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it They haven't. I've extensively worked on their Project Treble, and they did a beautiful work to perfectly versionize every behavior OEM might depend on, or version driver APIs. They could use that to provide long term support (which is what I do in my own project, the foundation is very sound), but in practice they use it as a way to obsolete code faster: Before Project Treble, Android kept whatever code was in use. So if some OEM was still using a 5 year old code path, and it was still working fine it would remain. After Project Treble, every driver API has a new version every year, and the older ones will be deprecated (read: purposely broken or completely removed) within 3 years. Before project treble, OEMs could maintain the Android for their platform quite effortlessly for 5 years, nowadays they have to rewrite whole parts of drivers after 3 years. someone will come and say that since Project Treble OEMs have been upgrading for longer. But I consider it's completely a matter of timing, the smartphone market stagnating. Look at nVidia Shield and fairphones for reference.
c2h5oh 3y ago
Qualcomm is still terrible at getting their SoCs supported in mainline kernel and as a result as soon as they stop providing updates to the kernel fork you're SoL. This can happen as early as 3 years after initial SoC launch
bearmode 3y ago
>I think the next bottleneck is likely to be software longevity. My girlfriend recently dropped (and broke) her iPhone X. She then bought a used Galaxy S9. The S9 is a few months older than the iPhone X. Despite that, the app for our home alarm is not supported on her S9, because for some unknown reason it requires Android 11+, and the S9 only supports up to Android 10.

microtonal 3y ago

The second proposed legislation from the article seems to require that at least 5 years of updates must be provided after the device was last sold. This is far more than many low-end and mid-range Android phones, moreover many Android phone manufacturers start counting after the device was released, not last sold. Interestingly, they also seem to put upper bounds on how quickly these updates should be rolled out. Eg. functionality updates must be rolled out within 6 months after another phone from the same brand has that update. So eg. if Samsung makes Android 12 available on their flagship phone, they also need to make it available within 6 months on the other phones that were sold to up to 5 years ago. https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12797-Designing-mobile-phones-and-tablets-to-be-sustainable-ecodesign_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa... This is such an improvement over the status quo.

tomjen3 3y ago
Is it? It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released, and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower. To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released That's perfectly ok, what you don't have you can't use. > and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower. It would be up to the manufacturers to ensure that this is not the case. One way to do it would be to reduce bloat. > To top it of, it is not like manufacturers are into throwing away money, so this will likely mean that prices on the cheapest phones will increase more. This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase more then surely someone will exploit that.
  - madeofpalk 3y ago
    Maybe it'll play out differently on the low-end, but on the high-end it seems there's been some "soft collusion" where one manufacturer raised prices, and others saw that as a signal they can also raise their prices.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Yes, that is a problem, but that's a different kind of regulation (anti-trust). The EU also tends to be pretty good at busting such things, but they take their sweet time to do it.
    - benj111 3y ago
      In the low end, surely you'd get more standardisation. Same processor, screen, Bluetooth and mobile chips. So that from an update pov it's easy. They can always differentiate with cameras, batteries, cases etc.
      - sroussey 3y ago
        So a communist phone for the lower class? That’s the not-nice way of saying the same thing. I’m not sure if I am for or against that without more thought.
kitsunesoba 3y ago
It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put out new models at a high cadence. This in turn should make for better parts availability since the window that any given model is manufactured in is wider. It'd also incentivize sharing parts between models where possible. All in all, positive for the end consumer. It might've been a problem in the earlier days of smartphones, but the category has more or less plateaued by now and so the benefit of high model churn with each new model sharing little with its predecessor is dubious at best.
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  Or it actually accelerates the model pumping. If the software has to be supported for 5 years after it’s last on sale there could be a perverse incentive to roll SKUs like crazy even if there are not any actual changes so you only have to support for the shortest possible time.
  - mschild 3y ago
    That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers currently offer.
    - sverhagen 3y ago
      Sure it would be, but I think the implied point above was that including the period the device is sold (what's that? say three years), the total support time is much closer to the ten years that was being discussed up top, and pumping out more new devices may shorten that back to closer to five years.
      - happymellon 3y ago
        Does having 3 devices that you are supporting for 10 years make more work than 10 devices you support for 5? Because while that doesn't make sense in my head, I could easily see that being the methodology used by the Android device manufacturers.
kevincox 3y ago
I would love if this software support needed to be printed on the box. Sort of like EnerGuide or the Nutrition Facts. Feature updates: N years, Security Updates: M years ... This way consumers can actually try to factor in the lifetime of the device when purchasing. Oh this device costs 10% more but will get security updates for 2/3 longer, so it is actually more economical. Then if the company doesn't comply with the label they need to provide full refunds or a replacement that will get updates.

pizza234 3y ago

In my experience, the current bottleneck with (Android) phones is that the get very slow without any apparent reasons after a few years. I've had multiple reports of acquaintances complaining about their phones getting slow after a few years, and I've always assumed that they were just full of apps... until it happened to me. I can't find an unambiguois explanation; my guess is a mix of CPUs deteriorating over time due to heating, and disks due to cell degradation, but it's certainly a mystery.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
That interpretation is incredibly generous to the companies that benefit from you feeling a need to replace that phone.
jacquesm 3y ago
It's not a mystery at all. Planned obsolescence is a thing and manufacturers have all kinds of perverse incentives to ensure that your perfectly serviceable phone gets traded in for a newer model.
- palata 3y ago
  I like to call it "premature obsolescence". I don't believe that the manufacturers actively try to make your old phone get slower. Rather the opposite: they don't try to keep your old phone working. The devs probably have the latest phone, and write code that works well with them. This code can be inefficient, as long as it works well on the newer phone, even if it makes older phones slower. Maybe I am being pedantic, but I think it is different: it is _not_ that manufacturers actively pay their devs to make the phones slower (which would be planned obsolescence), but rather they _do not pay_ the devs to make sure the old phones _do not get slower_. The latter is "passive", that's (to me) premature obsolescence: the manufacturer could fight premature obsolescence, but it has a cost (and obviously they don't want to pay for it).
  - noirscape 3y ago
    There's some degree of active involvement with this. I've long suspected Apple to do this for example. The best version of iOS for any iDevice is usually the one just before the one that they use as the hard cutoff point. Granted, my big example of this is quite old (the iPhone 4 would run iOS 6 really well, while on iOS 7 it was a glitchy, slow, battery-draining mess) but it does seem to be a common trend (my last Apple phone, the iPhone 5 ran quite well on iOS 9 but would just have a complete breakdown if you installed iOS 10). They were IIRC also caught red-handed a couple times deliberately releasing updates to older iDevices that would just wreck their battery life and have a few lawsuits pending about that.

scarface_74 3y ago

> But basically I think phones have now reached a place like laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years any more. Unless you care about your phone working as a phone. 2G was discontinued years ago, 3G is rapidly being dropped by the carriers and how much longer before 4G is discontinued? > streamlining the Android update process? (To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it). What exactly is Google doing? Apple released a security update for the 2013 iPhone 5s earlier this year.

XorNot 3y ago
Even in your example you point out that 3G "is being rapidly dropped" but it's not dead yet. The iPhone 3G came out in 2008. So just today, 15 years later, it would still work on most networks (certainly I can still use 3G in Australia).
PeterStuer 3y ago
3G is alive and well in IoT.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  All of the US carriers are shutting down 3G. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-affect-your-phone#:~:text=All%20of%20the%20major%20US,system%2C%20or%20even%20your%20car https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-aff....
  - PeterStuer 3y ago
    What I implied was it might not be a big thing for smartphones, but there are a lot of IoT devices out there that will fail the 3G sunset.
Freeaqingme 3y ago
Then there's still wifi of course. Admittedly, a phone without cellular connections is less useful, but it could still be used to function like a tablet that's simply kept at home etc.

phh 3y ago

> To Google's credit they have already done a _lot_ of positive work in that area as I understand it They haven't. I've extensively worked on their Project Treble, and they did a beautiful work to perfectly versionize every behavior OEM might depend on, or version driver APIs. They could use that to provide long term support (which is what I do in my own project, the foundation is very sound), but in practice they use it as a way to obsolete code faster: Before Project Treble, Android kept whatever code was in use. So if some OEM was still using a 5 year old code path, and it was still working fine it would remain. After Project Treble, every driver API has a new version every year, and the older ones will be deprecated (read: purposely broken or completely removed) within 3 years. Before project treble, OEMs could maintain the Android for their platform quite effortlessly for 5 years, nowadays they have to rewrite whole parts of drivers after 3 years. someone will come and say that since Project Treble OEMs have been upgrading for longer. But I consider it's completely a matter of timing, the smartphone market stagnating. Look at nVidia Shield and fairphones for reference.

c2h5oh 3y ago

Qualcomm is still terrible at getting their SoCs supported in mainline kernel and as a result as soon as they stop providing updates to the kernel fork you're SoL. This can happen as early as 3 years after initial SoC launch

bearmode 3y ago

>I think the next bottleneck is likely to be software longevity. My girlfriend recently dropped (and broke) her iPhone X. She then bought a used Galaxy S9. The S9 is a few months older than the iPhone X. Despite that, the app for our home alarm is not supported on her S9, because for some unknown reason it requires Android 11+, and the S9 only supports up to Android 10.