Google could have updated the Pixel 3 until Android 13, it just didn't want to | Hacker News Reader

Google could have updated the Pixel 3 until Android 13, it just didn't want to

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173 pointssorenjan137 comments

This is why we need alternatives to Google and Apple phones/OS, here is a list I have written over the years althought it may not be entirely up to date or completely accurate:

* Phone hardware alternatives to mainstream brands

  * Fairphone 4 [NL]
  * Librem 5 from Purism [US]
  * Pinephone from Pine64 [China]
  * FXTec [UK]
  * Volla [DE]

* Linux-based OS

  * PostmarketOS - "postmarketOS extends Alpine Linux to run on smartphones and other mobile devices. [See compatible devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices]
  * Mobian
  * Manjaro ARM
  * Maemo Leste
  * Pure OS [US] (purism)
  * Sailfish OS [FI]

* Others - mostly android-based alternatives

  * Ubuntu Touch "Ubuntu Touch is not based on the "mainline" Linux kernel, but rather on the "downstream" (that is, highly patched) Android kernel that came with it originally, with an abstraction layer, halium, to adapt Android drivers and userspace to Linux systems. "
  * /e/ foundation [FR]
  * Lineage OS
  * GrapheneOS
  * LuneOS
  * Nemo Mobile

  * CalyxOS

edit: updated according to comments

Nit: Pine64.com is china-based (it handles hardware design and production, software is outsourced to the OSS community).

after some loong wait-and-look-at-trends, i switched to sailfish last year.

linux / qt and all. good.

Android-app support.. ~ yes. good. If app doesnot work it's mostly because it wants to googleize me.. and fail. i can live with that.

Some websites won't open because somewhat old webkit - the hell with them.

No native clients for this or that.. meh. i can live with it.

it's essentialy like a computer in pocket as it should be. everyday things. ssh and what not if u really want.

Not an eye-enabled-wallet as all else has become..

Does it have voice recognition for commands? That really is the issue I think Open Source has: they don't have the resources for comprehensive competitive voice recognition interfaces in phone OSes.

Why is voice recognition important?

For phone OSes? Seriously? 50% or more of my interactions with my phone are:

"Get directions to X"

"Set timer for 20 minutes"

"search for local banks"

"Call X"

"<name of restaurant> hours"

If Open Source phone OSs can't do that, they won't compete with the spyware OSs.

whoa hold on there, apple is doing mighty fine with delivering updates to their hardware.

For anyone who's unaware, the current iOS 15 supports iPhones going back to 2015.

Their software quality for the latest and greatest updates leave much to be desired, but they take care of their existing devices better than anyone else on the market.

For a phone. Android has set the bar incredibly low. Kobo has supported their $130 Kobo Touch eReader from 2011 longer than any iOS device. On PCs its trivial to run modern software even on ancient hardware like a Pentium 4 with Linux/BSDs. Even Windows can let you easily get 15 years out of a device.

Here's a more complete list of OSes [1]

Pinephone is China or Hong Kong based. It comes with one month warranty (within EU, warranty must be 2 years).

Maemo Leste is not based on Android, neither is Sailfish OS. These are Linux OSes, but the Android emulation layer (which SFOS has but costs money for license) might be Android-based, I don't know. Maemo Leste contains no Android emulation, it actually predecesses Android. Nokia was into Linux-based mobile devices back in the mid 2000's.

You could also add devices like Planet Astro Slide to the list as it comes with a hardware keyboard (if its like the Cosmo one then I can say: the one Pinephone has, isn't quite as good, but is also relatively cheap). I posted about recent smartphones with hardware keyboards here [2].

Iodé might also be interesting, I don't know anything about it other than its a LineageOS + microG adaptation, like /e/

[1] https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Software_Releases

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30415716

> It comes with one month warranty (within EU, warranty must be 2 years).

Retail version will be available soon, $100 more expensive, with the right support. See here: https://www.pine64.org/2022/02/15/february-update-chat-with-...

I don't disagree but GrapheneOS for instance only supports handsets for as long as Google does. I think some of the other distributions also follow this rule.

I'd say this is why we need e-waste legislation.

> GrapheneOS for instance only supports handsets for as long as Google does

Because it's not a project with a goal of breathing old life into provably less-secure hardware.

If you want to reduce e-waste, know you will be reducing your security, and use Lineage or whatever targets the most devices,

not the most security.

I don't think it's fair to say security only decreases if you install Lineage. Yes, you'll lose some security during the boot process and with debug mode, but you also get newer security patches fixing exploits your older OS would be susceptible to.

Could you point to a case where a fully patched Pixel, running Google Android or Graphene, has a vuln that is fixed by Lineage?

Seeing nothing but the opposite.

Also, my point was more: if you need to run Lineage, your phone hardware just isn't as secure as a Pixel, in multiple meaningful ways.

IMO, what we need, is regulatory obligation to separate SW/OS and HW.

HW-makers, just want to sell HW. They don't care about the SW, and will just do whatever they can to sell the HW. We need to force HW makers to open SW. It can even be beneficial for them by reducing their development costs.

And then, we can have SW-makers competing on long-term support, and features, and openness, etc.

Does such a scheme ring any bell? Yes, there are actually already such small niche products! Ever heard of Windows? RedHat? SuSE? That's exactly what they are doing! We just need such schemes on smartphones.

How would a separation work? I can't say I have a full solution, but here are some ideas:

- Remove the arbitrary limitations for backups. Both Android and iOS backups are severely lacking when it comes to user backuping their device to their own services. Why is this important? Because IMO the biggest user lockdown is not being able to transfer data

- Impose some standards. I don't like UEFI, it feels clunky, and old, but it's standardized, it's pretty clear what are the responsibilities in it.

- Make "bootloader unlock" more standard. I think that ideally, it would be HW switch or button, which is hidden, that is documented in user guide. Like chromebook's unlock screw. Actually, it shouldn't be so much an "unlock", but rather a "change root signing keys", but anyway.

There are some limitations for sure, and currently, the best way to get longer support on as many devices as possible is through Project Treble, so it requires to have Android as a basis provided by the OEM. It doesn't feel right to me. I dream of being able to impose Linux mainline support, but uh, no, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Also, even though I would want to force Apple to unlock their bootloader, they are not doing anything wrong wrt long term support, so forcing this down to them on the ground of right to repair, doesn't feel ok.

> It can even be beneficial for them by reducing their development costs.

There's no world where phone makers stop customizing the software they ship, even if forced to allow users to install competing OSes. It affords some product differentiation and helps tie users to the platform. Even if you let me install an open OS on my iPhone tomorrow, I couldn't possibly do it because all of my digital life is tied up in Apple's ecosystem (including the human capital of learning to use the platform well).

I think the poster you replied to was also advocating a symmetric requirement that you could get the OS without hardware, i.e. take iOS and the Apple ecosystem with you to your favorite hardware vendor's phone.

Your point raises a third axis (services) but also illustrates to me how hopeless this all is in our current world. In my ideal world of consumer freedom, vendors would not be allowed to bundle hardware, software, nor services to prevent interoperation.

I despise all this subscription and rent seeking to try to turn every product into a locked-in service dependency. As an aging computer scientist and long-term developer of open and free software, I feel myself drifting further apart from a world that so willingly embraces an asymmetric and transactional existence with regular people locked into some amorphous, global company town.

> There's no world where phone makers stop customizing the software they ship

This is exactly what Pine64 is doing with their Pinephone. They probide no software at all, just hardware.

Now do the same list, but only for OS/hardware that supports verified boot.

Spoiler: probably left with only Graphene and Calyx.

Security matters, and no!, hacks/exploits don't only happen to those who are specifically targeted!

Is this surprising to anyone? My present phone is a Motorola G5 Plus, low-mid range model released in early 2017 which I bought new at the time unlocked for under $200 USD. Motorola stopped updating it with Android 8.1, but it runs the latest version of LineageOS based on Android 11 just fine.

One of my tablets is an Amazon device which stopped getting updates to Amazon's proprietary Android 5-based OS. But it runs Android 10-derived LineageOS just fine. A relative was just going to throw it out because the software was out of date. The amount of e-waste produced due to this practice must be scandalous.

Purely in terms of specs and performance, most devices since about 2017 can run the latest software. Manufacturers rarely support the device for more than a year or two, though. This pattern of behaviour goes all the way back to the very first Android device. The HTC Dream was dropped after Android 1.6 but it can run later versions.

I ordered a new phone to replace my pixel 1 from 2016 this past week. It was running fine with LineageOS but AT&T is forcing it off their network :/

I've read a few comments over at r/lineageos saying that phones still work. They're sending the message to anyone without a phone "approved" by them.

Apple's still supporting devices released in September 2015.

Apple also fully controls all the stack, unlike all of the other vendors.

Weird, I thought Google made the OS and was responsible for the hardware in the article we were talking about...

...and with Tensor they have the chip as well.

Apple made their own SoCs. Google didn't. The pixel 3 used qualcomm snapdragon.

This was Google's decision, though, right? They're a trillion dollar company after all, and they've even released chips before (TPU)

It was, and it is something they've shown they're working on. 6 and the coming 7 (believed) are running on white-labeled Samsung chips

Did you read FTA's title...?

Pixel 6 is a flagship phone from Google, it uses Google's own Tensor SoC, and runs Google's own Android OS. It was released in October 2021, and is guaranteed Android version updates until October 2024. Security updates until October 2026.

Three years of updates of Google's own software on their own hardware is ridiculous and inexcusable. It also shows that it was never about who made the SoC.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705#zippy=%...

>Three years of updates of Google's own software on their own hardware is ridiculous and inexcusable. It also shows that it was never about who made the SoC.

Are you talking about the pixel 3 or pixel 6? The pixel 6 (which uses their own SoC) is getting 5 years of security updates. That's much longer than what the pixel 3 is getting, which confirms my comment.

Pixel 6. Five years of security updates, but only three years of new Android versions. It's a silly and needlessly short time frame for updating their own software on their own hardware, and it's what drives most people to replace their otherwise fully functioning hardware.

So inform some people that a new theme is less important than security patches.

We don't really need to be told here; tell some "normies"!

But Samsung, Asus, Sony ... don't. Can you imagine the amount of backlash google would get if their own phone and only their own phone got special treatment for android updates? So it sounds "weird" at first, but not after thinking about the consequences.

I don’t understand this comment they already have a different update schedule.

> I don’t understand this comment

Feel free to think about it more.

> they already have a different update schedule.

irrelevant.

Google does not control Android updates for any phones besides theirs.

They work on the upstream Android project,

and then sometimes work with other manufacturers to get updates spliced into whatever custom shitshow version of Android a manufacturer has put together.

This behaviour goes back since mobile phones exist, back in the Series 30 days, there was the possibility to update the firmaware using the developer SDK (if at all) and even then there would be one update, tops.

I have the same phone and I just use the stock OS and it works pretty well. I've swapped out the launcher, removed a ton of apps with adb (including almost all the Google ones), made the animations go at 2x speed and I'm pretty happy with how it's working. What did you upgrade for and does the Lineage build you're on have the Moto features from the stock ROM? (FM radio, gesture navigation with the fingerprint sensor, chop for flashlight, etc.)

No particular reason, I just prefer to run the same OS on each of my devices. The FM radio, cameras, accelerometers, GPS/GLONASS, etc. works, never tried the fingerprint sensor or gestures.

The fingerprint sensor navigation thing is really nice, if you have the Moto Actions app it's called One Button Nav. You tap the fingerprint sensor to go home, swipe left to right to open the app switcher thing, and swipe right to left to go back. It's honestly my favorite thing about this phone.

I believe that "right to repair" for Android means that we should compel OEMs to unlock bootloaders of any devices that have exited support.

As Google faces antitrust action in many jurisdictions, I hope one of them grants us full control over the devices that we have purchased, especially when they are abandoned or otherwise the victims of neglect.

The bootloaders of the devices that Google sells in its own store are already unlocked. The only exception are Google phones that are bought from some mobile carriers such as Verizon.

The bootloaders aren't unlocked, they're just not carrier locked. Big difference.

Last I knew, Verizon insisted on locked Pixel bootloaders.

Assuming this remains the case, do not buy Pixels from Verizon.

Yes, and I have unlocked my 3a and wiped prior to Lineage.

I have several Android devices where this is not possible, and bringing this requirement to the rest of the Android ecosystem is our "right to repair."

Verizon is not the only exception. I purchased a Pixel 2 directly from Google, which I replaced under warranty due to a defective microphone.

Years later, I tried to install LineageOS and hit the "Flashing Unlock is not allowed" error. It turns out that Google ships warranty-refurbished Pixel 2s with permanently locked bootloaders. No solution, no apology, no indication that it won't happen again:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22pixel+2%22+%22flashing+un...

Then you were replaced with NOT the same product you brought in.

Should have opened a small claims lawsuit for the cost of the phone and sue them. It's easy to show the judge "I bought this phone and can use it with any carrier, and when warranty at Verizon was done with it, can no longer use it anywhere other than Verizon"

You simply materially did not get the same (or refurbished) product you brought in.

My point is that this has nothing to do with Verizon. I bought the Pixel 2 from Google and only used it on the Google Fi network. It's a bootloader lock, not a carrier lock.

Frankly - I think it needs to be broader in scope than just devices that have exited support.

This sort of lockdown is equivalent to selling someone a car, but not providing them the keys - Oh, you wanted to start your car? Just call us and we'll do it for you.

It would be utterly unacceptable to call that ownership for most other physical items, and we shouldn't allow companies to sell hardware with digital locks if the owner isn't provided a key.

I don't mind the lock (just like I want my car to have a lock) but I damn sure better have a key.

Google has a support page that lists the planned obsolescence dates for all Pixep phones: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705

My Pixel 3a is going to stop receiving security updates this May. It’s still a perfectly good phone despite the increasing slowdowns with every system or Play Service update.

I’ve learned my lesson and switched to iPhone as my next main phone, and relegated the Pixel to serve as a backup.

If the kings walled gardens Apple would say that "we will keep this next iPhone secure and working snappily for basic tasks, web/email/utility apps, for a decade with a possibility to replace batteries" I would actually consider taking a stroll in that greenhouse. Until then, no thanks.

Ten years is a really long time in tech. And you can pay Apple to replace the battery for you.

"we will keep this next iPhone secure and working snappily for basic tasks, web/email/utility apps" --- No Android phone maker can even make this guarantee for more than 2 years.

> No Android phone maker can even make this guarantee for more than 2 years.

Samsung pledges 4 OS updates, 5 years of patches for 2021 and 2022 flagships

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_pledges_4_os_updates_5_year...

That's the issue, only flagships. All the more affordable and mainstream models don't get any meaningful software support.

Apple has some horrific practices that I don't agree with when it comes to repairability, but at least it treats its products the same way. The iPhone SE from 2016 still runs the latest iOS version, same for iPhone 7.

I'm mainly taking issue with the original claim of "No Android phone maker can even make this guarantee for more than 2 years."

I don't really care what Apple does because I'm not in the market for iOS phones.

With regards to non-flagship models, Samsung is providing 3 years of updates for the A52, which still beats the grandparent comment's claim.

It still remains to be proven in practice. Their past track record shows that even for higher end devices the promised monthly updates silently become quarterly, or get delayed or mysteriously disappear as soon as the next year devices hit the shelves.

Do you have proof? My Note 20 Ultra (released in 2020) received 3 updates in the past 35 days -- and this is for a region that's trailing Europe and the US in terms of updates.

https://doc.samsungmobile.com/SM-N9860/TGY/doc.html

Search for “Samsung quarterly updates”. There’s plenty of information online

https://9to5google.com/2021/04/05/samsung-drops-galaxy-s9-do...

https://r2.community.samsung.com/t5/Galaxy-Note/Samsung-Gala...

I have the S9 too. What was unexpected was that it still received monthly updates for 3 years and then down to quarterly updates after that. (Samsung did not promise anything and the usual practice was updates for 2 years *at the time when I bought it*).

S9: https://doc.samsungmobile.com/SM-G9600/TGY/doc.html

Note 9: https://doc.samsungmobile.com/SM-N9600/TGY/doc.html

You can see they still received updates this month.

Samsung phones are laggy day one though, and the UI makes your eyes bleed from disgust.

They do give you around 6 (and that's with full feature updates and for much more than just basic tasks), which is much better than most Android manufacturers. Although Google has promised 5 years for the Pixel 6. You can't easily replace the battery yourself, but it's not expensive to get a shop to do it.

The latest iOS still supports iPhone 6S (2015), and a battery replacement from Apple costs between $40-80 if I remember correctly. Do you have any android device in mind (from 2015) that is still supported and sees regular updates?

I actually have a 3a XL, running Lineage.

I am contemplating a switch to /e/os from the original developer of Mandrake Linux. I'm going to try it out on a OnePlus 3 at some point in the future.

MicroG is included with /e/os and Lineage remains hostile to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//e/_(operating_system)

https://e.foundation/

I use this on my Pixel 2 XL -- it's an unofficial LineageOS fork but from the MicroG developers. It's worked great for me thus far.

https://lineage.microg.org/

I used that for a long time, but the project stopped shipping updates for a few months, so I moved back to Lineage.

The Aurora store also would go offline for weeks on end. I am hoping that /e/os has a better solution than Aurora and a regular release schedule.

/e/ is just a slower-to-patch fork of Lineage.

Good luck.

Security costs money.

Now you're paying, AND don't have the security.

How does he not have security now?

Price of iOS 0 day vs price of Android 0 day, would be one of my stronger arguments.

I used the title ("Google could have updated the Pixel 3 until Android 13, it just didn't want to") from the source article, but it really applies to all Android phone manufacturers. The key point in the article is this:

> Qualcomm has confirmed to me that it is still able to deliver Qualcomm-specific software updates for the Snapdragon 845, and while kernel-level support will be an issue for the chipset beginning with Android 13, things right now under Android 12 are just fine.

Snapdragon 845 is what powers most high end Android phones from 2018, and I don't know of any manufacturer that still delivers updates to those phones even though they're still perfectly usable. It is often reported that updates beyond a couple of years isn't possible because of Qualcomm, but they don't seem to be the issue in this case.

It does indeed apply to all vendors. However, it is especially embarrassing for Google to do so poorly with their own line of phones.

I don't think those software updates would come free. I think Qualcomm deserves half the blame here because they produce such horribly locked down products.

Wasn't Treble supposed to decouple Android version updates from hardware drivers? It seems as if Google (and other manufacturers, but it's Google's OS) just like to point fingers and blame others to save some money.

I don't know anything about phone vendor relationships with Qualcomm, but "able to deliver" does not necessarily mean "able to charge a reasonable price." If "able to deliver" means "has competent engineers familiar with the product, and are willing to put those engineers on the project in exchange for full costs plus profits" rather than "can e-mail you an up-to-date repository", it can be prohibitive.

Especially with as few as ten million Pixel 3s sold [1], and a half-life of less than two years for cell phone usage, it's going to be hard to justify even a single engineer-year so late in the game for such a small audience.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/pixel-3-by-the-numbers-googles...

The half-life of less than two years is a chicken and egg problem. People buy new phones because their old ones doesn't get updates, and phone manufacturers doesn't update old phones because too few people use them.

I don't understand how it could take a full time engineer one year to produce a software update for an already fully functional phone. Even if that was the case, $500k/year for ten million devices is 5 cents per phone. If companies can't be bothered to spend 5 cents to keep a fully functional phone from becoming e-waste for another year I think regulation is in order.

For reference four of Google's execs recently got huge bonuses ($2M) for contributions to "Google’s performance against social and environmental goals for 2022."

https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/22867419/google-execs-mill...

I flashed my Pixel 3 to the CalyxOS [0] with Android 12 on Friday. It has been at least 6 years since I have put a custom OS on an Android phone... I was shocked at how smooth the process was using the provided installer. Took less than 30 minutes. This particular phone, I use solely for Android dev. Based on my initial experience with CalyxOS, I could definitely see myself switching to it for my daily driver.

[0] https://calyxos.org/

Same boat. I just flashed GrapheneOS onto my Pixel 3a over the weekend, and the process was stunning compared to the days of CyanogenMod on my Nexus One. Notably, Graphene offers a WebUSB-based installer (https://grapheneos.org/install/web), so I was able to completely flash my phone from a browser without ever opening a terminal. Equally amazing and terrifying.

(Apparently there's some bad blood between Calyx and Graphene, which is a shame. Both seem solid.)

I guess the main issue here is the lack of Google Play Services, which may mean that you can’t reliably implement certain features or reproduce conditions that your end users will face. Perhaps it doesn’t matter for a dev-only phone, but if the device doubles up as a test device, this may be where a non-Google ROM falls down. I’d be wary of using CalyxOS as a base for a dev phone, for this reason.

You are definitely right about that.

I tend to work on apps that do not rely heavily on Google Play Services. BUT I should also add that this CalyxOS phone and an /e/ foundation phone I have, are 2 of about 10 Android phones of varying manufacturers and SDK levels which I am constantly rotating thru while developing. I like to make sure I am testing my stuff on a broad array of Android devices, including non-google ones. I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone use a non-google Android phone for _all_ dev purposes when targeting mainline Google Android phones.

I should also note that MicroG[0] attempts to solve this problem, with admittedly mixed results, but I have positive feelings about its future.

[0] https://microg.org/

I have a Pixel 3a XL I am seriously considering installing a custom ROM. One question though, how is the camera app? Is it as performant as the one preinstalled?

It's not as good.

Wasn't the whole point of Project Treble to abstract the OS from the low level using a HAL so that most of Android could be updated even if the low-level was stuck?

Yeah... Maybe that's why another person in this thread had such an easy time flashing a 3rd party OS using the WebUSB installer and not even opening the terminal.

+1 points for Google for cool stuff like Project Treble (gotta keep techies on board)

-99 points for Google for abandoning Flagship devices for 99% of users that techies might have sold to family and friends.

If it's so easy, then I don't understand why they don't just have a high level OS version that they can make available across all of their devices? How much overhead can there really be?

(I really would like to understand better.)

I actually do just that: https://twitter.com/phhusson/status/1447824974396497924

My oldest supported device is Pixel 1 (released in 2016): https://twitter.com/phhusson/status/1454155975515152387

I'm pretty much alone, and do it in my spare time. So, it's fairly easy to do.

Actually, Google do provide some GSIs: https://developer.android.com/topic/generic-system-image/rel...

But they are unusable as daily driver on the majority of devices. Many (I'd say most) devices simply won't boot, most devices would have no in-call audio, there wouldn't be VoLTE on any device, backlight control would be broken on many devices, etc. etc.

Google doesn't do it because they have no incentive in doing that.

Now HALs are indeed properly abstracted.

What does Google do with that? They actually use that, to deprecate devices FASTER than ever.

How? Well, now that the HALs are perfectly formalized, they can say "Okay, a device launched with Android 8, used audio HAL 2.0, while Android 9-launched devices use audio HAL 3.0. We support Android for 3 upgrades, so for Android 12, we can REMOVE the whole code supporting Audio HAL 2.0". While before that, Google couldn't really know what code to remove or not, because they couldn't really know what was used.

So yes, Project Treble, in current Google's implementation, Project Treble turns out to obsolete things even faster than before, and in Google's new Treblish certification plans, I see no place for Fairphones or nVidia Shield with real long-term support.

So, overall, IMO, Project Treble net result is pretty close to 0 (it does have some positive aspects, not just the negatives I just said).

My hope is that some company would appear to lack this gap. Because thanks to Treble, it is actually possible to make reasonable long-term support, by making the code that Google removed to bring back support.

I go with 200 - 250 Euro phones. The oldest surviving one is from 2016, stuck at Android 8. I use it as backup and as GPS tracker / navigator on my bicycle because it's small. The recent one is from 2019, Android 11 and still getting security updates. I don't know for how long it's going to go, but 70 Euros per year / 6 per month (going down) is OK. Of course I'd prefer to see it going on forever. My laptop is from 2014 and sooner or later it will die either because of lack of spare parts or because NVIDIA won't release a driver compatible with my card AND newer Linux kernels. Who knows if I'll be able to use Noveau by then.

On the Android side, Samsung Xcover Pro, Fairphone 4, and Google Pixel 6 all promise 5 years of security updates. Apple has a track record of supporting their phones with 5 to 7 years of security updates after launch.

Sure, some past phones maybe could have been supported longer, but things ARE getting better. Don't just focus on the negative, embrace the positive things happening in mobile hardware, too.

I once specifically bought an Android One phone (Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite), in hopes that having a clean Android and the promise of updates for at least two years will prevent this very problem. Sadly, the update to Android 10 was delivered almost a year late and in such a broken state that made the phone practically unusable -- apps were getting killed so fast that you couldn't even login to some apps as opening an in-app browser immediately killed the original app.

I have nothing but respect for the XDA community who managed not only to fix the problems, but to update the device to Android 11 and then Android 12 while adding useful features, including a port of Google Camera with all the AI features.

So if you care about the software on your phone, I'm afraid that using a custom ROM is the only way.

>With these options for updates available, there’s only one conclusion to draw: Google just doesn’t want to keep updating the Pixel 3. That three-year promise has been satisfied, and it's not making more money from Pixel 3 customers. Why go above and beyond?

To retain if not grow customers. We are looking for a phone for my wife's mom who has a moto G5 plus. For her user profile (calls, texts and video calls using whatsapp), a moto G5 was perfect at that time. We (pixel users ourselves) are lobbying her to use an iphone especially due to this BS EOL policy by google. She is very careful and can easily use a phone for 5+ years if the device lets her. Only iphone fits the bill as of now.

" the phone never feels slow ..." haha lol but seriously. Only a person who never uses iOS can believe this. I have a Pixel 3 and an iPhone SE, by far the worst phone Apple sells, and the difference is like night and day. The Pixel 3 is already a janky, laggy slideshow with Android 12. Android 13 is undoubtedly bloated enough to make the Pixel 3 unusable. I am glad they did not try to cram Android 13 onto this device, because that would have forced me to replace it.

I don't use Android phones but the 2016 iPhone SE is still getting updates. It will probably go legacy this year but 6 years is pretty good support.

> And, according to everyone I've spoken to, there aren't any good technical reasons for it being left behind. Google just doesn't care.

Despite all the reactionary commentary here, this is the only “evidence” mentioned for the headline. The rest of it is opinions and preferences.

Why aren’t the alluded-to technical reasons listed or explained?

I wish they didn't push 12, it completely broke my wife's Pixel 3

Install Calyx or Graphene, it's a 10 min procedure front to back.

it will take her hours to back up her phone via USB C cable since she can't do it on the phone directly, and then again hours more to set her phone up again as it was

It is very sad that no alternative mobile OS is *BSD based.

STOP BUYING GOOGLE HARDWARE

At least don't buy it new.

In the meantime, the iPhone 6s, released more than three years before the Pixel 3, is still receiving updates.

If you buy an Android you already know the deal. It's not like they are stabbing you in the back.

It's also true that the user experience of a 6s running iOS 15 isn't going to be very good.

> It's also true that the user experience of a 6s running iOS 15 isn't going to be very good.

Are you basing this on real experience or just fishing for HN anti-Apple upvotes?

Just asking because my kid is using an iPhone 6s with iOS15 and really experiencing absolutely no problems whatsoever.

Buying an iPhone 6s was an excellent if lucky choice, the luck was that the original SE was based on it so the support guarantees of the SE carries the 6s with it. With Apples usual 5 years there'll probably be another 1.5 years of support since the orignal SE was discontinued. (After that I suspect that a bunch of other devices will be discontinued quickly again)

Definitely the latter.

I'm in the same boat, my kid is now the third owner of a handed down 6S and it still does everything without being slow or lacking app support. The features it is missing are mostly neural engine related and are conveniences not vital functionality. I could 100% use that phone as a daily driver and not be frustrated if I swapped in a new battery.

I’ve got more than enough karma and a secure enough ego to have no need to go fishing for votes on HN thanks. Don’t the site guidelines say something about being charitable in your interpretations of other people’s comments?

Anyway I have used a 6s on recent versions of iOS. It works but don’t kid yourself if you think the experience in any way compares to using a recent device.

I use a 6s on iOS 15. It runs well.

It's actually not true. I bought a 6S last year (or previous year) for use in testing iOS apps. My main phone has since died, and I've switched to the 6s. And the experience is excellent. In fact, in many ways it's superior to newer iPhones: it TouchID, and a headphone jack! The only thing that I wish it had is a better camera.

The lack of a headphone jack was one of the reasons I was reluctant to get a new iPhone.

I had the same issue with my old 6s but I recently changed the battery and it is shockingly fast now. The battery replacement only cost me $34 which is cheaper than buying a new phone. I have a SE 2 but since it doesn't have a headphone jack I will be sticking with 6s.

I use an iPhone SE (mk 1) that's basically a 6S, mostly works fine (have had to replace the battery). Things like web browsing, general apps are fine, nothing feels slow. Most things are responsive etc. Have no need to update as it does everything I want it to do with no issues.

I have had an oddity in the last year or so (so iOS 14 and onwards?) is that music playback software seems to get background killed (OOM?) fairly often if it isn't playing. Main issue for me is my general pattern with driving would be to cue up music / podcasts beforehand, pause it and when I select bluetooth for sound in car it would start playback. Now I seem to have to be careful not to actually do anything with my phone (like check websites or whatever) after preparing audio, otherwise there's a strong chance you'll just get nothing.

So not perfect, but this may be a weird edge case I'm running up against. Doubt the phone is going to get iOS 16 though, so will have to think about what to do.

I think those first few years of iPhone where phone power was really leaping up between models, and iOS was jumping in complexity alongside it did give Apple bit of a bad reputation. We got software updates (good) but they just didn't perform at all well on older phones (bad). It seems to have settled down a bit nowadays where iOS isn't outgrowing the old hardware as much. But of course then we had the infamous "people think we're intentionally slowing down old phones, lets ship a feature that protects the battery by intentionally slowing down old phones and not tell anyone" thing.

It's strange that it has to be this way though. I just retired my iPhone 6s because the battery didn't last very long anymore. I don't really need anything but text/phone/email so I didn't feel like shelling out for a new iPhone. I got a Moto G Power. It's a good phone, except for all the absolute shit loaded onto it. So much to turn off in so many places.

Specifically, needed to get rid of:

- Google Assistant

- Google Location Services

- Avoid accidentally signing up for Verizon's "cloud" and "digital secure"

- Disallow Verizon's app from collecting location when not using the app

- Disable and de-permission Verizon Cloud, which has tons of permissions even though I never accepted using it

- Turn off Google "location accuracy"

- Turn off personal results for ads

- Turn off tracking for ads in apps which is a separate setting

- Change the default messenger from Verizon's "Message+" to normal messaging to avoid having my messages copied all over the place

- Get confused by some weird "premium" upsell in the Voicemail

- Turn off "monthly driving stats" in google maps which is enabled even though I have location tracking disabled, what the hell even is this?

And that's just the stuff I remember.

And I still get a nag screen on maps for having web history turned off.

I guess Google wants everybody's data and Verizon wants to sell "premium" things for more money, but I wish there was just one button to shut all this shit off. There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

The Moto G costs less precisely because they get the money back from those practices.

So get a used Pixel for the same price or less, and flash proper software onto it.

The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services (unless you don't want to get your location at all), so after that one-time setup, you ended up with a better phone.

> The iPhone doesn't even let you turn off its version of Google Location Services

Can you elaborate on this a bit more?

You cannot get your location on iOS without also sending your location to Apple. As far as I know, iOS is the only platform that has this deficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21708157

Why not replace the battery in the iPhone? It would have cost less than the G Power and probably continue getting updates for exactly as long.

Didn't think of that. Just saw my iPhone rocket down from 50% to 10% one time too many and instantly ordered the new Android phone.

> There should be a "good Android" option that costs less than an iPhone for people that would pay a little more money for less garbage.

There is, actually: Android One. E.g. Nokia makes phones that have minimal crapware preinstalled.

You will still have to deal with Google's own crap... like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die. Even with absolutely every setting in every google settings page in every google app explicitly disabling the Assistant, if you dare speak words resembling "ok google" it will still "helpfully" pop up asking if you'd like to enable it. And sometimes spontaneously. While you're typing, hoping you'll fat-finger "yes please".

I just tried saying "OK google" to my phone and it did not summon the assistant. (Hooray!)

I have the generic "Google" app disabled, which I think is the thing that listens on the microphone for that. I don't really know what else it does, so I'm not sure what else is unavailable once it's disabled. I don't expect I'll be missing much though.

>like the retarded Assistant that just won't fucking die

Sadly I can't describe all actions I've done (I just don't remember) but one of the most crucial is to replace you home screen app.

Zim/Omega launcher is a good starting point - Zim doesn't know about assistant, Omega has the options to not to use it.

Along with Hacker's Keyboard, F-Droid/FoxyDroid and methodologically going through the Apps and Permissions in Settings helps to tame this Hydra.

Or, don't start caring about your experience/security/privacy after buying a device,

do a few minutes of research in advance to buy a phone that has a prayer (Pixel 3a is popular in this thread),

and install Graphene on it from day 1...

Nokia is never an option, because they do not open the bootloader on any phone. Worse, in the beginning they lied they would, to get people to buy their crap. Also, don't be blinded by their brand, that brand is actually chinese HMD now, with the chinese attitude to running random closed binaries on your phone. So if you go down that route, better get a properly supported phone, like from OnePlus.

As others have said, replacing battery is fairly straightforward for 6s, I did it a couple times on mine until replacing a few months back. Look for the higher capacity batteries, I had luck with Amazon. Will take you probably 30 mins to switch out.

Alternatively - I just upgraded to an iPhone SE which seems like essentially the same phone as 6s but a little faster/smoother. Fits my minimalist needs which sound similar to yours. Dealing with the Android crapware sounds a lot less fun to me.

You might have luck with a cheap battery replacement. These could be had for about 30 bucks two years ago (by an Apple Authorized Reseller). Displays were also dirt-cheap, unlike today's devices where the display is almost as expensive as a new device.

Edit: meant as reply to throwhauser

My 2016 oneplus got an OS update sometime in the last year or so. So it's not all of them.

How on earth are you supposed to show impact and get a promotion if you’re working on maintenance projects?

By having a longer term outlook and doing things might actually gain you market share in the long term.

By demonstrating that the product you're maintaining indeed still works?

> By demonstrating that the product you're maintaining indeed still works?

... The post you are replying to was a rhetorical question because the answer to your question famously is "No, absolutely not".

This is a snarky response and could absolutely be worded better, but this is the truth in Google. You only advance if you bring something new to the table. Software isn't maintained because there is no reason for people to do so internally.

Believe it or not, the Core Developer organization, which is the most focused on tech debt and maintenance of any of the organizations, has a measurably higher promo rate than the norm at Google.

"Can't get promo for tech debt or maintenance" is simply a myth.

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