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Comment by achernya | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect Google to update a device to the latest version when the hardware manufacturer has exited the market -- http://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-samsung-galaxy-nexus-owne.... While Google does control Android, that's not the only software that is present on the phone. Short of the Nexus series starting to have open source baseband and radio firmware, we'll be at the mercy of hardware manufacturers.

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First, as others point out, there are several devices with either the same (or very similar) versions of the ti omap chipset running 4.4.

Secondly, I purchased a Galaxy Nexus from Google in late April, 2012 with the understanding that it would receive updates for at least 2 years. That is why I was very disappointed when it was not eligible for an update that arrived less than 18 months after I purchased it.

It is truely sad that a perfectly good phone is essentially e-waste, and cannot be used due to this bug.

This myth needs to die.

Google Glass uses a TI OMAP SoC from the same generation (4430). The brand-new Moto 360 uses a TI OMAP SoC from the preceding (!) generation (3630).

Google Glass runs KitKat, the Moto 360 even runs Android Wear 5.

It's not that much of a myth. When Google first announced that the Galaxy Nexus was not getting KitKat, I was pretty disappointed, as I had one too. I looked into why there was no official support, and when I found out it had to do with the firmware, my gut reaction was "WTF, that makes no sense." Digging some more, I found out that it actually has to do with kernel driver-firmware compatibility. Google wanted to ship an update, but they needed changes that TI was no longer willing/capable of making. In order to release KitKat on the Galaxy Nexus would either require Google to reverse engineer the hardware and make their own radio firmware (not likely) or holding back the kernel to the same one on 4.3 (subpar experience if it even works).

Neither the Glass nor Moto 360 suffer from this problem since neither has a cellular radio.

Ah, this is interesting. I had always though that it was something about the graphics system. Forgoing an update due to radio firmware is even more embarrassing. They probably could have done a shim layer, to translate between the old & new APIs.

Even shipping 4.4 with a 4.3 kernel would be far superior to having what is essentially a brick.

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