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Is it time to question the yearly release cycle for phones? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

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So recently I've been seeing the trend where Android OEMs such as Google, Samsung, etc. have been extending their software release times up to like five, six, and seven years after device release. Clearly, phone hardware has gotten to the point where it can support software for that long, and computers have been in that stage for a very long time. From what I can tell, the only OEM that does this currently might be Fairphone.

Edit: The battery is the thing that goes the fastest so manufacturers could just offer new batteries and that would solve a lot of the problem.

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[–] 2kool4idkwhat@lemdro.id 13 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Clearly, phone hardware has gotten to the point where it can support software for that long, and computers have been in that stage for a very long time

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Software supports hardware, not the other way around. You could run the latest android on any powerful enough hardware. The only limit is the porting effort

For example, the samsung galaxy s4 was released in 2013 with android 4 and the latest official version for it is android 5

The lineageos folks however have been - until recently - maintaining android 11 (and previous versions) for it, afaik fairly easly. The only reason they don't have newer android versions for the s4 is that android 12 depends on a kernel feature which samsung's ancient official version doesn't have. The lineageos folks could in theory reverse engineer the proprietary drivers and maintain a more up to date kernel for the s4, but they simply don't have the manpower

Samsung tho? They easily could support modern android versions on this 2013 phone, but they won't for the same reason they made batteries non-removable: they don't want you to use old hardware, they want you to buy a new phone every year

I typed this on my 2018 phone (oneplus 6) running android 14 (the latest official version is android 11)

[–] yonder@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

eyo, another oneplus 6 user! It's nice having a headphone jack on a phone. I run PostmarketOS on mine for virtually infinite software updates.

[–] 2kool4idkwhat@lemdro.id 1 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Nice. I actually installed postmarketOS last year for fun. How is it nowadays? Last time I tried it, the camera didn't work, I didn't manage to set up Waydroid, most non-GTK apps didn't adapt well to a phone, and afaik there were no push notifications (which was a big deal for me because having an app always running in the background made the battery drain much faster). Also what interface do you use? I used Gnome with mobile patches

[–] yonder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago

Not much has changed since then. I use Phosh since as beautiful as gnome mobile is, it lacks some functionality.

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