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ChromeOS was already guaranteeing 10 years of updates for every device. Has any Android phone ever gotten that many updates?

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The Nvidia shield vs other 1st party SoC devices running Android (e.g. from S devices with Samsung SoCs or Pixels with Google SoCs) goes to show the short lifespan of Android phone updates really has nothing to do with the underlying hardware or OS.

Also the type of updates guaranteed for 10 years on ChromeOS are not the feature update type that require upgrading the actual OS, just security and bugfix patches.

ChromeOS updates are actual feature updates - for the 10 years of support, your device will be tip-of-tree and have all the features (except a few which are flagged-off, usually for business or performance reasons)

Yeah, you're right. I got a little separated from the comment chain here after writing about the Nvidia Shield and what it implies about phone lifecycles by conflating that story with talking to ChromeOS. While the Shield received major kernel version updates as recently as 2 years ago, going back to the actual comment discussion around the abstracted ChromeOS userspace vs firmware/kernel/driver layer ChromeOS does already drive feature updates of the upper segment of the OS for the full lifecycle without requiring the kernel updates seen in the Shield example. Good catch and thanks for the correction.

The Shield TV has had an impressive support lifecycle for an Android device but it still falls well short of a 10 year support cycle.

The Shield was released in May 2015 and its latest software update has an Android security patch level of April 2022 and was released November 2022. No more updates seem to be forthcoming. Notably, all Shield TVs today are vulnerable to remote code execution when displaying a malicious WebP image [0], a widespread issue uncovered last year.

Apple released the Apple TV HD two months after the Shield TV, but it still receives the latest tvOS updates to this day and will be receiving this year's new tvOS 18 [1] [2]. It received a fix for that WebP issue the same day as supported Macs, iPhones and iPads did last September.

Even the best Android device examples with good vendor support still seem to be falling short. The Shield TV is still capable streaming hardware in 2024 used by many people, but it's sitting there doing that while missing important security patches unbeknownst to the users.

[0]: https://blog.isosceles.com/the-webp-0day/

[1]: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/10/tvos-18-compatible-appl...

[2]: To be fair it's the only Apple A8 device that receives support until today. The iPhone 6 with the same chip was launched mid 2014 and received its last update in early 2023.

... which confirms that this has more to do with the vendor rather than hardware/OS?

I still have a Shield TV. It is pricey but my understanding is that other Android streaming devices suck.

I was thinking of getting a second Shield for my second TV but it turned out I had a $50 PC sitting around which works fine as a media player.

That's likely due to contractual obligations with Google and the use of well-supported AMD/Intel hardware and BSP. Linux hardware / device architecture makes this difficult on Arm and the many silicon BSP providers and that's what the stable Kernel Module Interface that Android imposes helps with.

They've had arm Chromebooks with the same guarantees. Magically Qualcomm and Mediatek seem to be able to find their firmware and kernel sources when it comes to their laptop chips.

lol, no? The most I got from Sony and Samsung in 2012 and 2015 was 1-2 years. Which is when I generally stopped using Android. It was frustraing enough to read all the news about "Google releases new Andoid with (list of features)" then asking when is my Sony/Samsung is getting that? to hear "oh maybe in 4 or 6 months if you're lucky. Or download this random ROM from `appzworrier` on xdaforum. Surely they haven't put any malware in the ROM or you'll hear about it here". I did give it another shot in 2019 with a Pixel 4 phone then after 2 RMAs with battery issues (4-5 hours of battery) I went back to iPhone. Funny thing is in 2013 and 2016 I switched back to the old iPhone I had before the upgrad, I just updated them to the latest iOS version there was at the time. After the shitshow I had with google support in 2019 I just gave up.

GKI didn't exist in 2012/2015, so it was very difficult and expensive for OEMs to support Android for longer. Apple could do so more easily because they control both hardware and software. Google introduced GKI and other related efforts/architectures to address this very problem, which is unique to Arm, Linux and the ecosystem around it.

It's really silicon manufacturer's fault for not wanting to mainline and long-term support their BSP, not Google's.

I would say it's both. Google could put support requirements in the gms certification

And how would that help when the major SoC manufacturer refuses to support their chipsets?

Let the market decide, then.

Isn't this what capitalism loving companies say, anyway?

Broadcom had to open source their wireless drivers at the end. Same can happen for SoCs too. Add pressure, if not broken, goto 10.

If a device cant get play certified it cant realistically be sold anywhere in the world except china, so no phone manufacturer would choose a SoC for their phone that was not supported.

Highest I could find is 6

The Pixel 8 is promised 7, which I believe is the highest of any phone.

I guess we'll see how things shake out.

Unless something drastic changes, I'm sticking with Apple because of their demonstrated long-term support. Every phone since 2015 has been supported for 6-7 years. And that's actual support, not a "technically correct" mix of real support and security patches only.

https://www.statista.com/chart/5824/ios-iphone-compatibility...

That's overlooking the fact that Apple does not release the full featureset of new iOS versions on older devices and as years pass the number of feature omissions increases.

which makes sense? like i can’t expect the new ai intelligence (a 3B model) will run at all on iPhone X

There’s hardware dependencies for some of the ‘missing’ features and if the hardware’s not there then there’s not a lot the OS can do to support it

The Fairphone 5 will get 8 years of security updates: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/180206715370...

it's laughable because i doubt they have any proof that Qualcomm will continue to deliver updates. fairphone is just a intermediary.

they are using the long life Qualcomm parts, that only guarantee production and stock for x years. maybe with software updates by an intern.

it definitely will not guarantee a new driver set compiling to a recent kernel if the old kernel must be upgraded for security or anything else.

so it's kinda bold they promise that with out any disclaimer that they are just hopeful

Librem 5 will get lifetime updates, because it runs mainline Linux without proprietary drivers.

> Availability of software and firmware updates

> (a)

> The latest available version of the firmware shall be made available for a minimum period of eight years after the placing on the market of the last unit of a certain product model, free of charge or at a fair, transparent and non-discriminatory cost. The latest available security update to the firmware shall be made available until at least eight years after the placing on the market of the last product of a certain product model, free of charge.

(b)

> Information on the minimum guaranteed availability of software and firmware updates, availability of spare parts and product support shall be indicated in the product information sheet as from Annex V of Regulation (EU) 2019/2013.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/2021/oj

I can't find all of it, but part of it (Samsung also did the same thing) is triggered by EU environment protection directives.

Samsung S24 has 7 years as well

Google can’t even keep a project alive for that long, so let’s not jump ahead. We will see when they actually deliver.

Um they already delivered, for example on 8 years of updates for past Chromebooks.

"10 years of updates" for Google products is a bold claim. Will ChromeOS even exist in 2034, let alone run on 2024 hardware?

Why wouldn’t it? It might be rebranded as Android Desktop in the future or something, though.

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