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SomeGuy69 ,

I’m still on android 12 (galaxy S10 from 2019). Why replace an OLED premium phone that’s still lasting me all day with its battery with 6+ hours screen time and no scratches? And I don’t even use battery protection options. Only a few months ago I had to enable battery saving mode, which I didn’t use before at all.

smeeps ,

As time goes on you’ll be exposed to more and more security vulnerabilities with no patches.

Nothing wrong with running an old phone but you should unlock it and put Lineage OS on or similar.

SomeGuy69 ,

Then my banking app would stop working, it doesn’t work on rooted phones.

nossaquesapao ,

That’s what you get when you require users to get a new device in order to run newer software. I would gladly run the newest version, if I could just update my os, but since I can’t, I will be running this old version for as long as I have to…

RvTV95XBeo ,

The issue is how hardware manufacturers treat Android. Most 3rd party manufacturers take months if not years to update their under the hood BS to the latest Android, and they end support after 2 years. All the more reason to go with Pixel devices.

limerod ,

Samsung is also at updating most of their smartphones to the latest version of android.

50MYT ,

Also carriers they often take forever to update too

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

With new devices now being sold with a set number of Android version upgrades and seven years of support, it’s really not as bad as it used to be. This, and GrapheneOS, is why I’m considering buying a Pixel next: Google has always met their promises when it came to software and security updates, and now those promises seem to actually be getting good.

Also, I must say, I only upgraded the ROM on my device because the Android 13 one stopped receiving updates. Android 14 has added absolutely nothing Android 13 didn’t have, or couldn’t have had. Most of the improvements were in the launcher and in a few Google apps. The last major noticeable Android improvement must’ve been in Android 10 or 11 maybe

Until Google can come up with something new, I don’t really see the point of major Android upgrades. They’re mostly just new skins over the notification UI and a collection of app updates (launcher, dialer, browser, etcetera) released at the same time.

I know things are a lot better under the hood now, but as an end user I wouldn’t be able to distinguish a skinned Android 9 phone from an Android 14 device. One of the two can be hacked remotely by simply having Bluetooth on, that’s the biggest differentiator to me.

killingspark ,

Tell Nokia to release android 13 or 14 for my device and I’ll gladly run it.

MudMan ,

Yeah, unlike Windows this isn't a user choice. It comes down to manufacturer support. I don't know what you do to make this better, especially in the context of newer Android updates being lighter on major user-facing features.

killingspark ,

I’m also unclear on the exact technical details but there’s probably a reason that lineageos and the other free androids out there are not easily installable but have to be customised to each device.

I’m pretty sure that reason is mostly manufacturers being dicks about this. So it could probably be fixed by mandating some kind of interoperability. OTOH the governments are probably happy that not more people are using degoogled devices

MudMan , (edited )

Whose mandate? Are you going to make a law saying you can't customize Google's base Android?

It's an open source OS, manufacturers offer crappy support because they want customizations and proprietary software but don't want to have to spend a bunch of engineering time to keep pace with Google's reference spec. Samsung does, but that's because they're the literal largest phone manufacturer on the planet.

But Google can't be out there saying you don't get to use Android code if you don't offer timely support for a decade. There's a reason years of security updates are now a declared selling point, the only force to drive it is market pressure. At most you could regulate that you HAVE to support swapping OSs on phones, but you can't just target that at Android and not Apple, and Apple would buy themselves a nuke to fight against that one.

downpunxx ,

I got my S10 and Android 12, and I'm feeling fine (edit: they start making smart phones with removable storage, removable batteries, and a headphone jack, and i'd consider getting a later model, but there's absolutely fucking zero that's come out in the last 6 years I've had my S10 that I need, and a whole lot that I'd lose, so, fuck em, they're doing this to themselves)

Ilandar ,

I’d really like someone to do an in-depth, but easy to understand, investigation into how much monthly system security updates and version upgrades actually contribute to the overall security of Android post-Mainline. There are so many different opinions about this online but very few are actually backed up by evidence. I genuinely don’t give a shit about running behind on Android versions now from a features perspective, there is so little difference between them for my use case, but it does concern me that so many manufacturers are still miles behind on security patches and that newer versions of Android may contain significant security improvements. I’m not sure if that’s actually a relevant concern though or if I’m being overly paranoid. How much does the user’s behaviour contribute to security versus the policies of the manufacturer? I have so many questions about this topic but it never seems to get any detailed coverage beyond “bigger number is better”.

M500 ,

While the new features may not matter to you, it makes devices much harder to develop for. This is one reason why Android versions of apps are worse compared to the same app on iOS.

But like you, security updates are very important to me. If I were ever going to switch to Android, I’d only consider getting a pixel. And I won’t consider that until it has a native desktop mode so I can essentially use it as my pc.

Ilandar ,

This is one reason why Android versions of apps are worse compared to the same app on iOS.

I watched a random video recently where an iPhone user tried to use an Android phone (a Z Flip 5) for a week and was surprised by how significant some of the differences between apps were. Like Instagram had entire features completely missing on Android that really annoyed her. Having never used Instagram, I had no idea feature parity was still that bad between the two operating systems when it came to mainstream apps like that. However, it’s understandable I’d be so out of the loop because basically all my apps for the last few years have been FOSS and exclusive to Android and no one I know owns an iPhone so there has been no direct comparison for me to make.

MudMan ,

Are they worse? This seems outdated, but then, I haven't used an iOS phone as a daily driver, so maybe there's some magic making the iOS version of Google Maps so much better? I mean, it is true that it's harder to make Android apps, but a lot of that has to do with displays being arbitrary aspect ratios and resolutions across dozens of devices, more than anything else, at least if you're focusing on mainstream devices.

On the other issue, why not go Samsung? They are matching Google's "7 years of updates" thing and they DO have a pretty solid native desktop mode. There are reasons I don't use Samsung devices these days for other reasons, but if that's the bar, I think they're meeting it.

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