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Comment by slownews45 | Hacker News Reader

In fairness it is getting (very slightly) better.

A few years ago the phone co's would sell a phone today to your parents that was already 1-2 version behind especially if the phone was released a year or so ago. And then NEVER update it over 3 years outside of (maybe) some security updates.

For some reason, a month after iOS is released, phones from Apple, including older phones still being sold, are either sold updated or can be updated.

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> For some reason, a month after iOS is released, phones from Apple, including older phones still being sold, are either sold updated or can be updated.

That reason should be pretty obvious. Apple has a massive profit margin on their phones, so they're economically able to do this.

The margins are super small with Android devices, so if any OEM tries to offer support they'll be quickly undercut by the competition

There are more reasons than that. Apple has tight control over its operating system, and even designs many chip components themselves (not all). Android phone manufacturers on the other hand integrate finished components from various manufacturers, together with their driver packages. If Qualcomm doesn't create a new set of drivers for a new android version, they don't have much of a choice.

Google themselves abandon their phones after only a couple of years. It’s awful for the environment, users, and app developers.

Meanwhile my iPhone 8 got iOS 15 over 5 years after it launched.

And they are still updating older versions of iOS for some reason.

iOS 14.8 was 9/13/21 14.7 was 7/26/21

iOS 12.5 was 6/14/21

So that's 7+ years?

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