Still running the latest iOS on my 6 year old first-gen SE.
Why can't Android do the same?
Why can't Android do the same?
They only supported the 5C for two years after they sold the last device.
Now say you want to get updates from upstream regularly. Every time, you may have conflicts with your patches, and you have to fix them. That's costly, so why would you do that for old phones people already paid years ago?
Long story short, I believe it's easier for Apple to not break compatibility with old iPhones than for an Android OEM to stay up-to-date with upstream.
What exactly makes mobile special?
Or more succinctly, because phones won the race to the bottom.
I guess it's different for laptops, somehow.
p.s. status on this? thanks https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/issues/1...
This is basically what I was getting at.
Sure, Google could release newer Android versions (assuming they'll run under whatever last kernel version Qualcomm provided support for, which isn't always the case), or at least release patches for flaws in Android itself, as long as they'd want to, but after the chipset support runs out, they can't update some drivers and firmware. I think it's not unreasonable to just declare those devices as insecure and move on.
Google has managed to get support up to five years, but only on newer Pixel devices. I'm sure that wasn't an easy negotiation.
Apple, in contrast, builds all the hardware and software in iPhones and iPads, so they can decide to support devices for as long as they wish.
1. The lockscreen bypass security flaw of last week is major compared to any flaw Qualcomm currently have.
2. Apple still updates devices hit with checkm8, so maybe security doesn't dictate everything for them. Not sure why it needs to for Google.
3. What does security has to do with getting Material You to my device? (to give just one example). Maybe the idea is that if a device is insecure, then it must get to the trash bin...? I hope not.