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Comment by markstos | Hacker News Reader

Quite well? Google abandons their phones after three years and repair options are limited compared to Apple. Apple has been supplying software updates for their phones for five years lately. On the plus side for Google phones, they are able to run third-party ROMs when Google quits supporting them.

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? Google devices receive Android updates well into 5+ years. I had a Nexus 4 (2013) running Android 8.1 (2017-2018).

I also belive Android tends to have fewer breaking OS changes that render modern apps incapable of running on both older and newer OS versions, compared to iOS, so it's significantly worse for usability on iOS with a device that is ~4+ years old.

This got very rare, even for the Nexus devices. The Nexus 5X got only a little over 2 years of feature support, and 3 years of security support, which is the minimum they guarantee.

The Nexus 5X was a disaster of a phone so I don't blame them for sticking to the minimum. I actually switched back from my Nexus 5X after 6 months to my fully working Nexus 4 when I was pleased to find it was continuing to receive all the OS updates. Probably could still finagle a Android 10 ROM onto it if one tried hard enough.

I will grant shitty devices like the 5X is something that happens slightly more often with Google devices than Apple (although the Macbook pro keyboards kind of brought parity).

I still think for the layperson consumer, apps continuing to work even if they are not being actively developed is a bigger deal than continuing to receive constant security updates, from the perspective of device usability past 3 years at least.

Plus they don't have a great track record on the hardware durability. Some anecdotes: I had a bootlooping 5X after 11 months of ownership (that Google refused to replace) and my Pixel stopped being able to receive calls, also after 11 months (again, Google refused to replace it). The Chromecast I bought also only worked when it felt like it, which was, maybe 20% of the time. I won't buy their hardware anymore.

My Pixel C is still being updated four years later.

I do agree about repair options. It's pretty much impossible to repair the screen on a Pixel C.

Pixel 1 just received the Q updates and is still getting security update. Are you comparing premium Apple built phones against 400$ nexus phones which were co-made by Google just to have a vanilla device for development? Nexus line was never meant to be a high-end phone with good support.

Even Apple's $400 phone has been supported longer than the Nexus 4 was.

Apple doesn't have a 400$ phone, unless you're referring to 2 year old phone. And again, Nexus phones were not made by Google.

The iPhone SE started at $400 and is now 3.5 years old. It will probably get another 2 major iOS releases. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SE)

The Nexus 4 launched November 2013 and got it's last major update to 5.1.1 in May 2015 according to Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_4)

There is this thing called legal contract, that Google could have used to enforce Nexus support.

TBH it's comes down to Qualcomm not updating their drivers .

What about phones running on Kirin or exynos SoCs?

shouldn't be that difficult to support your own fabbed SoC, but yet they sorely lack updates.

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