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I looked up the last Android phone I owned: a Galaxy Nexus (2011), which shipped with 4.0, and stopped receiving OS updates after 4.3. Which is pretty much why I stopped using Android.

I think Google is doing a better job of supporting their own brand of phones these days, but it remains unfortunate for Android app developers that you have to either target a ~5 year old OS or cut off millions of users.

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The Galaxy Nexus didn't even get one year of updates! I also had that phone, what a clusterfuck it was, I remember that when you took it out the box it had an animation when opening the app drawer and it was laggy. Just like that, out of the box, it couldn't keep 60 fps. That's the standard of quality that Google keeps.

I bought a Pixel 2 and it had three years of updates. As you can see, they have come a long way [laugh track]

Part of the problem was that Android 5 was an awful release. It was slow and buggy compared to 4.4, many internals had been newly rewritten. Folks were better off sticking with 4.4.

I still consider 4.4 to be the best version of Android.

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