Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmlnr | Hacker News Reader

Android 8 user here, because I got tired of hunting for half-working internet supported releases for my phone. Plus, to be honest, I lament the 2.3 times: apps were literally 100x smaller, and the OS was much simpler from every perspective.

I still have a HTC Desire with the last 2.3 based MIUI, and that OS is still wonderful.

View on HN

Do you get security updates though? I stopped getting them in Dec 2019. Forcing my hand to move over to a phone with Android 9 that gets quarterly security updates still(on March 2021 now I think). I realize this is a manufacturer/carrier thing as far as I know, and I'd like to go back to a nice clean debloated 8.1 or whatever. But I feel like I'm dragged kicking and screaming along the path of forced obsolescence just skimming over the security stuff that apparently I'm never going to get if I don't upgrade phones.

Honestly it's just really annoying. I've toyed around with Lineage and such but at some point it seems it got a lot harder to do things on a lot of models and carrier configs. It seems you need to really research exactly what phone model is open enough and has enough people graciously doing open source work to support updates and such outside of the manufacturer and carrier.

> Do you get security updates though

Nope. And I even stopped updating Firefox, because their move to Quantum on Android made a great browser and abysmal experience.

Once this phone dies, I'll go and buy a Fairphone, hoping that might be kept alive a bit longer with updates.

I only buy Android One phones now. Monthly security updates for several years, guaranteed. Pretty stock Android, too.

Great? Perhaps not. But much better than the phones manufacturers just dump onto the market and then forget about.

I thought Android One devices had stopped receiving regular updates? I know I read a report that most/all of them had yet to receive Android 11 two months ago and that security updates were now being released months after they used to be. If I recall that report correctly, it sounded like new devices had all but stopped being released and that it seemed like the program is on life support now. I know that program was very locale-specific, so maybe that was just in the US?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com