The future ought to be something like PinePhone (but with better hardware) that can be customized to run a variety of OS with consumables such as batteries easily user replaceable.
First, let's remind that LineageOS does not run on 15 year old smartphones (and they drop support for a device when there is no upstream support from vendors on the same Android version).
One issue is that unlike x86/x86_64, there is no generalized abstraction platform (similar to BIOS/UEFI/ACPI description tables) that enables "one kernel to rule them all" i.e. you need some custom adjustments on your kernel for your SoC and board. Since a few years we have device-tree which improves a lot the situation, but I understand it does not cover everything (i.e. there would still be some missing aspects compared to UEFI/ACPI with regards to hardware description. Maybe some embedded experts can comment ?). Besides it is still not always implemented in chipset vendor's BSP which sometimes still rely on board files (where the data is not easy to extract from a binary kernel, noting that a lot of low-end OEMs do not properly comply with GPL and do not publish their sources)...
Nope, they drop support when the community runs into issues with a particular model that it's impractical to fix. Upstream vendor support helps but is not required in any way.
Device tree "doesn't cover everything" because some device components are yet to be supported in the mainline kernel. Once mainline support is added, that enables a 'universal' kernel to provide that support via the device tree.
Windows on Arm devices use UEFI + ACPI, including Windows Phone starting from Windows Phone 8 (2012!). That allowed even the latest releases of Windows 10 Mobile to work on totally unsupported devices (1st gen WP8 devices) when that existed.
It's not an Arm problem, it's that the Android world didn't bother really tackling the problem for a long time.
For ACPI, the vendors themselves tend to avoid changing bindings between generations for Windows there. Compounded with a stable driver ABI, things continued to work stably within all of Windows Phone (NT based, 8.0 to 10)'s lifetime, which had security update support until December 2019.
Windows RT 8.1 still gets security updates today, and will continue to do so until January 2023.
Linux not managing to standardize on a proper driver ABI _or_ stable bindings with the drivers in the kernel tree is just a Linux problem, and doesn't even affect other kernels on the platform, which mandate ACPI or something else.
> There is completely unlike how x86 works where everything really is standardized and you don't need specific drivers operate every peripheral on the board
Nope, on x86, the meaty bits like the GPU and such do not have a stable register interface or anything remotely near that between generations. :)
On Arm systems, the interrupt controller (GICv2/3/4), timer (arch timer, since Cortex-A7/A15), IOMMUs (SMMU) and other standard devices were standardised since ages now (Apple is their own bubble and doesn't apply to this discussion). One of the remaining issues so far is PCIe hardware quirks/erratums, but that's getting solved.
But Qualcomm isn't interested in making their Linux drivers work with their ACPI definitions, they are stable between generations on Windows though, and not changed needlessly over there. (which allowed us to work to bring AArch64 Windows on the Lumia 950/950 XL using drivers from other SoCs too)
Also for what it's worth, Qualcomm does update their ACPI definitions between SoC generations. They also fork their drivers to match. If there was a stable driver ABI they could probably do the same on Linux but that's not an option.
On server, ARM vendors went the PC route and just adopted standard interfaces used servers (pcie, sata, etc). This is large departure from SoCs targeting phones, tablets, and iot.
The biggest concern there is the PEP power management mechanism instead of using what ACPI provides.
> This is because things like buses, storage and display are standardized
That's a rosy view of x86. Quite some laptops ship with Intel RST set up such as stock Windows wouldn't boot on them before adding that driver. Display (frame buffer) is standardised too as UEFI GOP, but that no longer applies when the GPU driver takes over of course. Storage controllers & USB bindings are standardised too.
Doing a Qualcomm driverless boot on those platforms is very much possible, with storage and USB available, enough to install the OS and make it reach the desktop.
(and on a side note, as far back as the Snapdragon 810, PCIe was very much used. The Lumia 950 (XL) had their Wi-Fi controller over a PCIe bus.)
Qualcomm having "stable" bindings is a choice they've made. There is nothing forcing them to do that. The point is that they could not do that, because they know all images built for their phones will be specialized.
Qualcomm may use PCIe for one off peripherals, but it is not the bus used for most peripherals.
You can also get away with ugly hacks and sub par devs. Doesn't matter anyways, you got all the money from selling the SoC, software is an afterthought.
Often it's because of lack of app support, which is in turn because of lack of updates. Of course some people will always want the latest phone, but there are plenty of people that don't, and the second hand market is thriving. This is especially true in countries with lower income levels. I went on a trip to South America a few years ago, and most of the young people seemed to be using iPhone and android phones from top-tier manufacturers, but several generations old.
...like apple and its recent focus on services?
Which should incidentally make sense since they'd be still supporting because of the said law anyway.
Another side effect is this may also discourage them from churning pointless new models year after year with minor spec bumps.
They'd never abandon a working business model like that
Indeed they are, but planned obselescence should quite simply be illegal. For sure it'll hurt some businesses, but it's better for everyone else.
Also they're famous for making their products hard to repair. It's hard to find spare parts, hard to find their custom screw heads, and hard to tear everything apart. You can't even remove the battery without tools which is very user-hostile, bad for the environment, AND was a pattern "popularized" by Apple, because if any other hardware manufacturer had dared to do that, they would have sold exactly ZERO phones.
All in all, Apple is close to the worst manufacturer i can think of to get inspiration from, although on specific topics (eg. LCD screen solidity) they are definitely not the worst.
(I do agree to longer enforced support on devices nevertheless)
We'd need an open spec SoC for that.
Basic video is the keyword, on its heyday of GNU/Linux drivers it was capable of OpenGL 4.1 with hardware video decoding, then it got replaced with a driver that does OpenGL 3.3 and that is about it, thankfully the Windows drivers have been kept up to date.