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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

It’s crazy Google thinks that’s an acceptable time range considering apple regularly supports 7 years for devices.

That said, anything longer and I’d be worried google just hallucinated that support and they’ll kill it off anyways. I vaguely believe this duration.

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Android and ios update cycles are different because on android most components are upgradable without OS update. Most notably the browsers get updates longer than 7 years and they tend to be the biggest security concern.

The real problem is the five years of security updates, especially since these devices will be sold for a few years and not just today. Major Android version upgrades don't add much anymore, in my experience.

I think they've added the "material you" theme to a recent Android version, but that was the last major change I've noticed since Android 10. Other than that, it's just a bunch of small details.

All the good stuff is delivered independently through things like Play Services and general app updates. You can easily run an Android 10 tablet that's gotten all the nice bonus features of any other tablet without ever upgrading the OS itself.

This is different from iOS, where any major software feature is delivered as part of an an OS upgrade. Almost all of the features I listed in the "new in iOS 16" change list would be pushed to Android as app updates, except maybe for Focus which integrates deeper (though Google can easily add it through Play Services if they cared).

Take passkeys, for example: new in iOS 16, but on the Android side they've been automatically added to any device running Google Play and Android 9 or later.

My iPhone 6S (which still receives security updates) has received more years of major OS releases than Google plans for security updates.

I'm not a fan of Apple or iOS but Google's devices largely feel disposable: if I buy them on release I get less support than buying a used two year old iPhone.

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