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Comment by katbyte | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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 ?

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