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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

Ha! I just retired my Mom's 5S and got her an S22 for Christmas. And a pre-paid plan too the phone company was consonantly sending texts suggesting she change to monthly.

That thing was a tank it was OK until about a year ago then the battery got noticeably worse. Not bad for someone who always let it die all the time always charge only when 0%. She almost always used it just for voice calls a few texts no web (no data plan).

No OS updates for a while too. So it was risky I thought to keep it going. Android is much easier to deal with. Although the ringtones and notifications are all different she has to now learn after almost 10 years of iPhone to new sounds by Samsung.

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Are you looking forward to Android’s lack of security updates in, say, 18 months?

Samsung promises updates to the S22 for five years after introduction (which means until February 2027 assuming we're talking about the standard version introduced in the beginning of 2022 and not a later model).

That’s still half of what the iPhone 5s got…

That's Samsung's "promise". Similarly Apple promises to provide 6 years of security updates. This update is an exception.

The relevant question isn't what Samsung has promised, but what they will actually deliver. I think we should be pretty skeptical of that promise based on Android's track record.

Samsung announced that their mainline phones and tablets from 2019 onwards would receive at least four years of security updates. We are now entering the fifth year of the life for the oldest of those devices, so we can already see what they actually delivered. No need to cast aspersions.

So they only need another 5+ years to catch up? I doubt we'll actually see that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fanboy and immensely dislike how iOS users are restricted in other ways, but updates and longevity are unparalleled in the smartphone world.

You are saying it as 10 years of updates is a norm with Apple phones, but it's not. If you read the article, it says that they believe their security issue might have been 'actively exploited'. Companies do release security updates in these exceptional cases to old phones. They don't give a 10 years 'guarantee', yet.

The Android phones I had so far never got anything beyond 3 or 4 years. I have an Apple 7plus that's turning 7 this year and pretty sure that won't be the end of it. It still gets regular security updates. As in every other week.

When iPhone started, it only got two years of updates. Then some got 2, 3, 4 or 5 years of updates. Android is fundamentally different and has to support thousands of devices, if a manufacturer is still giving 5 years of guaranteed updates, it's great, and this will only get better with time.

"Android's" track record? Are you sure you don't mean a particular manufacturer or OEM's track record? Because every company that makes Android phones does it differently. Here, Samsung delivered more than they promised:

https://www.aninews.in/news/tech/mobile/samsungs-55-years-ol...

It's not like Apple is delivering all security updates to these old phones either. This one looked pretty critical to them, as the article says it “may have been actively exploited”.

Does Apple state this 6 year policy somewhere?

I maintain endoflife.date and it’s quite hard to find any primary sources for what Apple actually guarantees as support

Apple makes no promise of support for any of its products and never has.

I would much rather use an Android device from a manufacturer or a desktop OS from Microsoft that is actually up front about their support lifecycle, than go with Apple that does not publish this at all.

Some Apple devices have had much longer support lifecycles than others, and I don't think that's OK given how expensive their devices are.

An iPhone 6 was supported through 5 major iOS versions (including the version it was shipped with).

An iPhone 6S released a year later was supported for 7 major iOS versions.

An iPhone 7 released a year later again was only supported for 6 major iOS versions.

This wasn't documented anywhere when people bought those devices.

Security updates for older iOS devices and macOS versions are sporadic and often incomplete.

Let's not give Apple too much credit here. There's some documentation out there about how older iOS machines don't get _all_ the security fixes. I think they get fixes for the biggest issues that get uncovered, but it seems pretty piecemeal.

Definitely better than most Android operators though, at least that's my impression.

Well in the case of samsung flagship models, there is such a large userbase that you can be quite sure there will be some lineageos or /e/ supported firmware available for a long time.

I own an old Samsung Galaxy S4 mini as a "backup phone" running on /e/. It was released in 2013 I think.

Are there new non official firmware / linux distros available for old iphones ?

Supposedly they're planned to get 5 years of security patches: https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-sets-the-new-standar...

Have any of these Android “service level agreements” ever eventuated? It’s not the first time Android was supposed to get updates for more than 18 months.

Google has been reliably delivering OS and security updates for the promised timeframes on their Pixel phones. I've run a few different models out to the end of their promised support window and updates were timely for the duration.

My Galaxy A51 just got Android 13 and the corresponding security update for January and this was a mid-range Android phone first released over 3 years ago. It's supposed to get more security updates after this although no more full Android versions (not like I can really tell anyways). So yeah, there are Android phones with more than 18 months support.

Since it’s Samsung it might as well be less than that.

Have you tried putting the iPhone sounds on the Samsung phone?

That's my plan but I haven't tried yet. I have changed the notifications to different ones. I wasn't aware that was possible anymore on new Android phones.

The newer Samsung phones get the less configuration user's have it seems.

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