At least you have the option of installing Cyanogenmod.
Look at the iphone. The old ones you can throw away. There are security holes that have not been patched and there is no alternative OS you can run on them.
Look at the iphone. The old ones you can throw away. There are security holes that have not been patched and there is no alternative OS you can run on them.
It inhabits the drawer for several years already.
There is Whited00r. I have an old loaner 3GS that runs snappily on it. Since Apple is quite good at supporting older devices and an iPhone 4 is still (for a few more days) able to run the newest iOS, projects like whited00r remain obscure compared to the cyanogenmod.
When I tried to find cyanogenmod images for mainstream Samsung models, I could not find anything viable to make it worth even trying. Some users will report it works but the majority have show-stopper issues with one or more of: wifi, battery life, stability, phone calls, gps, performance etc.
I suspect its unrealistic to ever expect an open source project to provide an up to date production ready image of an OS and closed drivers for 100s of different hardware models without substantial community interest and commercial funding.
Out of warranty mobile phones are just too complex, too fragmented and too niche a need to service properly.
I don't think the complexity/fragmented argument holds when a similar situation with GNU/Linux exists, which supports many, many permutations of hardware.
I don't see how that makes CM unviable, though. You just have to factor in CM compatibility into your buying decision. That means either basing a decision on past experience (ie. based on previous models, any new Nexus hardware -- if there is any -- should be ok), or waiting a bit after new hardware is released to see how it turns out. Of course the latter option is pretty painful for most of us.
It's too bad Google doesn't seem to care about any of this, though. It would have been nice if Android One devices came with guaranteed access to/documentation of the proprietary driver blobs, or, better yet, open source drivers for all components, or anything in that vein. But I think we're long past expecting stuff like that from Google.
I wonder if the mainstream models you're talking about are the ones with locked bootloaders. It would be interesting to know which ones are more likely to get attention than others.
I'd say that's pretty good going.
Nevertheless, no one is forcing Apple to pour their profits into extended support for older models.
If anything, the incentive is to end support sooner and push consumers to trade in their old devices for newer models.
Very few people keep the same phone for ten years; most people upgrade every few years, such that their high-end phone never becomes deemed a low-end unit.
If you're particularly cost-conscious, and don't see the added value of a high-end phone, then buy a low-end phone.
There's really no motivation for Google to keep issuing security patches for Android 2.x when there's a $129 4.x device floating around. And Android One does mention making the devices affordable. It isn't exactly green tossing a phone ever two years, but if they're priced like a commodity at least isn't as teeth-grindingly troublesome either.
My 4S will get updated to iOS 8 (it came with iOS 5).