Samsung committing to three generations of Android OS upgrades | Hacker News Reader

Samsung committing to three generations of Android OS upgrades

news.samsung.com

61 pointsingve57 comments

This isn't wildly impressive. Looking at the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history you can see a new Android is released every year around August.

So what Samsung seem to be saying is that we will support your Android device for 3-4 years. That is a definite improvement but not a lot of support for a $1000+ device.

> For example, the Galaxy S20 lineup, announced in February 2020 powered by Android 10, will get support for three OS upgrades starting with Android 11 to give users a refreshing phone experience. The Galaxy S20 line-up will also be the first Galaxy devices to receive the Android 11 upgrade later this year5, with other devices to follow shortly thereafter.

I had an original Samsung Galaxy Note which I loved as being one of the first big phones. The OS support was abysmal though which was one of the reasons I switched to the Nexus/Pixel line. Now Google hard cuts the support off at 3 years for the Pixels which I resent immensely on a very expensive device.

Depends on which upgrades you are concerned about. I agree that having new os versions supported for longer than 3-4 years would be good, but at least it looks like they will be supporting security updates for longer now, 6 years of security upgrades if I'm not mistaken.

How will they support security updates for 6 years when Google isn’t supporting that? Google usually deprecates support after 2-3 years. Also some security fixes require new kernels so there’s that.

For Samsung to do that they’ll essentially will have to fork Android.

So they are supporting three generations of android version, so if a phone comes out on 8, that means it will receive major upgrades to 10, so that's 3 years there and then Google seem to support 3 more years of security of 10 after it comes out.

I'm aware android 8 is old now, just using it as an example.

Looking at Nougat has no more security fixes (3yo), is Google the bottleneck here?

Edit: Previous versions tend to live up to 3 years only. If Google doesn't have initiative to update the service, I guess it has downstream impact to manufacturer to be less motivated to do so.

This is one of the biggest reasons I’m a loyal iPhone user. I experienced this first-hand when my iPhone 5 still received updates for a year after Google’s Nexus 7 tablet despite the Nexus 7 having come out two years later. And the Nexus tablet stopped being able to charge...

Phones that cost $1000+ are fine when you can keep them for 5+ years.

I have to agree, Apple when it comes to updates and how long they support devices do put Android offering to shame.

Well, for that money you can buy multiple Android phones and never ever run a two year old phone anymore.

Flagship? No. If you want an iphone level phone it basically costs you iphone level dollars whether you want Android or an iphone.

Of course you can buy a cheap phone, but for a 1K phone I expect support for more than 3 years or I wont buy it. That is one thing keeping me from switching back to Android. I likely never will with the preloaded crapware and lack of support.

If you want iPhone level performance - even that of a $399 SE, you can’t find it an Android at any cost....

Would you buy a chevrolet spark every year, Or a camaro and maintain it during 4 years?

I'd buy a Skoda, VW and a Toyota and maintain them for at least 10 years. The Skoda is the Xiaomi Redmi 5, the VW is the Motorola Defy and the Toyota is the Samsung SIII. They vary in age between 2 (Xiaomi), 8 (Samsung) and almost 10 years (Motorola), 2 of them (Xiaomi and Samsung) run the latest version of Android, the Motorola is stuck at Android 4.4 due to a locked bootloader. All of them work fine.

Buying the 3 of them costs less than buying a single iPhone. They last longer than any iPhone due to the possibility to update the OS as long as there are developers working on the device. The 8yo Samsung gets weekly OTA updates (which I do not always install...).

Sure, our children will thank us for creating a rotting pile of perfectly working devices because the manufacturer can’t be bothered to upgrade the software.

The original iPhone SE which sold for for $399 is starting it's sixth year of OS and security updates. That's less than $70 per supported year.

After updating a brand new ipad from 12.x to ipad os 13, Safari tabs started crashing all the time. I got a replacement unit and it did the same thing. Tried out ipad os 14 and the whole device reboots frequently, usually if a tab plays any kind of video.

On their bug reporting app, switching apps while having a bug report half filled-in in order to e.g. check which URL caused a recent crash, will immediately throw the bug reporting app out of memory and lose your half-entered bug report.

Updates within months of getting a brand new device (on the low end RAM-wise), seem to have completely ruined it. People have told me to buy one with more RAM and most issues would be resolved, but I don't want to throw in more money for uncertainty.

I have made a couple of bug reports regarding Feedback Assistant losing my report. I don't understand why immortalizing user input isn't a higher priority in general. I no longer trust that iOS devices will not suddenly lose unsaved content. Apple has failed me with its memory management on both iPhone X and iPhone 7 with iOS 13 (and earlier), so I refute that spending more money will solve it, though it may help.

I wouldn't consider mysel a loyal iphone user, but this argument is one of things that tip the balance in favour of iphone, nowadays you really don't need new os updates to get the latest features on android as many are bundled inside the infamous google services, but some years ago, watching how new features rolled out to almost any iphone while the androids get those features slowly, was a dissapoinment.

Sure, iOS gets updated but the app store won’t let you download old versions of things while new versions are incompatible resulting in a useless device.

I now have an old iPhone and an iPad that both run great, but I can’t do anything useful with them.

>the app store won’t let you download old versions of things

Any app that you have previously downloaded can be downloaded again while viewing your purchase history (which includes free apps). For apps you never downloaded in the past, you would need to download the current version of the app on another device first.

You will receive the last version of the app that was compatible with that device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq1cmTfJq-M

Ohhh, that's a great trick. Thanks!

You're welcome

Yes it will and it has done so since around 2013. I rediscovered an old iPad 1 a couple of years ago. I reset it and downloaded Netflix, Hulu, and Crackle. A big pop up shows up giving you the option of downloading “the last compatible version”.

The catch is that if you have never downloaded the app before, you don’t get that option.

You either have to initiate the download first on a newer device or use a version of iTunes that supports app downloads. You don’t have to sync from iTunes. Just download the app.

Honestly it just sounds like you're not a heavy mobile phone user if you're only upgrading every five years. It might not be worth it to you or the "my phone is just a phone" crowd but for the mass of users for whom their phone is their primary computer three years syncs almost perfectly with when a person who bought high-end is going to start feeling the age of their phone.

I do think we should make note of the fine print:

>"By supporting up to three generations of Android OS upgrade, we are extending the lifecycle of our Galaxy products and making a promise that we will provide a simple and secure mobile experience that takes advantage of the latest innovations as soon as they are available.”

"Up to" being the key here. Not guaranteed.

I saw that, what's the point of even having a press release for such a vague promise.

Well, by using "up to", they at least guarantee that they won't support if for more than three generations...

Contrast for instance with Pine64 that guarantees they will manufacture their devices for at least five years. I sometimes feel like smartphones should be regulated: standardize everything when it comes to interfaces and footprints: battery, cameras, etc. That was done in the european union for chargers, and I'm willing to bet that very few people will argue it was a bad thing.

Or maybe artificially limit the number of devices a smartphone manufacturer can sell during a given time?

So that people read the headline, and then have a vague recollection at some later purchase time that Samsung has longer-term upgrade commitments than most Android OEMs?

It’s also “select” devices.

A step in the right direction but still a ridiculous situation for tablets now that they are pushing them into laptop replacement category, who would buy a laptop knowing that your >1000$ device is going to be impossible to update in 3-4 years...

To be fair, very few people buy Android tablets nowadays.

what do you mean by very few?

In the UK, Apple market share for tablets seems to be ~65%

So that’s how it looks on the surface...

Of the remainder, how many are the Amazon tablets? They are Android but are specifically designed for content consumption.

It is a growing market from 13% to 18% (compared to Desktop and laptop) https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...

OS support will be a problem, they are going in the right direction though.

It will be interesting to see if consumers follow.

Regardless of how many sell, you are still paying for a $500-800 device which has a very short support life.

Not every region follows the trends of the USA/Anglosphere.

In Germany Apple has like 44% tablet market share; Samsung has 33% [0]. (Presumably the rest are all Android tablets, too.)

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/tablet/german...

True, I was wrong. In my region (Norway) Apple has 76% of market share according to your source, but it even feels higher. It's indeed not the case everywhere.

This counts throwaway Kindle devices that have something like 5% of the performance of an iPad and nothing like the capability, however. Apples and oranges.

The fact is that there isn't a serious Android tablet market. Not really.

And very few will if this support cycle continues.

Samsung will sell you a device they claim can replace your laptop [1] for >700$ and then add the external keyboard and that can go close to a 1000$

The next generation one can cost over 1000$ [2]

I just don't see how they expect to sell these with 3 years of updates.

[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/tablets/tab-s6/ [2] https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/tablets/tab-s7/

Looks like my just-purchased S10e makes the cut, although the Galaxy Tab S5e purchased three months ago does not. Alas.

The more reassuring commitment, IMO, would be to four years of security updates. I don't necessarily need the latest-greatest version of Android to feel safe, but I do need to know that the latest batch of high-profile CVE's will be plugged.

I think they were already doing 4 years of security updates (3 years monthly, 1 year quarterly). My 2017 Note 8 just dropped to the quarterly updates train

Read this and thought, might be worth a try to upgrade my aged SM-T719 as it's gotten dog slow... but WTF? All Samsung does starts at 10 inch (for comparison: the T719 is 8 inch), that's way too big for me - and it's a 2017 model which means everything is aged!

Is there anything of decent quality (including availability of spare parts like batteries and screens, as well as somewhat reliable updates and a somewhat new-ish CPU) on the market at the moment? Hell I'd even drop my previous hard requirement of a decent camera and NFC... but it looks like the market between the 6-ish inch Note series and 10-inch stuff is totally dead :(

Ah yes, the Samsung that sells 5 different phones under the same model designation. Will be interesting to see if all the submodels and variations get updated or if carrier branded models will languish.

Nokia (HMD Global) has probably been the most reliable Android vendor in the Android One program for actually running long support cycles. Oneplus has been 'ok'. I have a Moto X4 that got 3 generations of official OS support and continues to get monthly security updates as well as a fully working LineageOS port to Android 10.

Nothing compares to first-gen iPhone SE though that is getting yet another year of updates. 6 major OS releases will have been supported...

The android community is still the most reliable with updates. (My oneplus 3 is still getting updates with LineageOS and so is the oneplus one)

Ultimately can't rely on this. The LOS devs are good but there's still going to be a point where blobs can't be adapted well or at all to new android major versions.

Also specifically more on point with Samsung: They are a vendor that's notoriously bad to community support. I would not make purchasing decisions based on the hopes that the community is going to pick things up after Samsung decides to drop the ball.

Why define it by generations instead of time? And also the fine print notes they do monthly and quarterly security updates. What happens if a more serious issue comes up in between those regular updates?

I guess that's great... Now we need other manufacturers to do the same, and IMHO extend this time to be at least of 5 years.

So, 3 to 4 years. Still less than Fairphone's 5 years. But hey, an improvement is still an improvement.

It says “up to” and restricts to “select” models. I don’t see the improvement, the press release isn’t claiming anything.

Thank you for submitting this as it reminded me to check the support status of my phone and it turns out that support ended in March this year. I suppose now I have to get a new phone. I don't think I will be getting another Android or iOS phone.

If length of support is your concern, why not iOS? Apparently, iOS 14 will support the iPhone 6s, which means that this 2015 phone will be supported until at least 2021.

Length of support is not my only concern, but even if it were, I would prefer to have a phone that works until its hardware is literally incompatible with the network, even if I have to keep it up to date myself.

I’ll believe this when I see it.

There have been multiple “we’ll support releases for X years” in Android land, all of which have seemingly disappeared without providing the claimed support.

Most people would be more interested in just getting security updates and bug fixes for 5 years+ or more.

Yes exactly. As a user, running the latest Android version on old hardware isn't terribly useful. And even if every manufacturer did the same, it wouldn't make developers' life much easier given the hardware fragmentation.

Google should really figure out a way to push security updates without the OEM's involvement. They can already update everything that's bundled in Play services, and core apps like the browser and the webview. It's good, but not enough.

In that case iOS is even better. Apple just release an update for the iPhone 4S (2011) last June.

Finally?

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