The reason you don't see long term support on Android is because of Qualcomm. Qualcomm wants manufacturers to build on new chips, so they deprecate older chips and stop support. Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs.
Samsung can pull off longer support because of Exynos and they have a lot of inhouse expertise to extend support on old Qualcomm chips.
It's all money. They don't want you keeping a phone for 5 years.
Apple can do it because they lock you into their walled garden where they can double and triple dip on getting your money.
They also build their own chips.
Yes.
Hardware vendors love Open Source. It essentially cedes all control of the market to them.
They spend minimal time/money/effort on software development and updates because surprise, surprise --- it doesn't produce profits, it consumes them. Hardware is where they make all their money.
The only realistic way to get long term software support on Android is from Open Source. This means installing a replacement, 3rd party Open Source ROM. This is the first thing I do when I buy a new phone --- and I won't buy a phone that doesn't have good 3rd party support.
I have a Moto G4 Play from 2016 that gets regular software updates running e/OS. The last update was May 14th. This is my backup phone (I have a backup for everything that is considered "essential").
My primary phone is a Moto One 5G Ace (2021) which also has excellent support from e/OS and it's currently cheap as dirt considering the hardware specs. Only $129 from Amazon with 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, Snapdragon 765 processor, 2 day battery and microSD expansion.
If I accidentally leave it in an Uber or drop it in a toilet, it's sad but no big deal. I just switch to the backup until the replacement arrives. Try that with your $1000 iPhone.
What ROM do you use and what level of support does it provide? I was interested in third-party ROMs until I read this part of the GrapheneOS FAQ[1]:
> GrapheneOS can only fully provide security updates to a device provided that the OEM is releasing them. When an OEM is no longer providing security updates, GrapheneOS aims to provide harm reduction releases for devices which only have a minimum of 3 years support. [...] Harm reduction releases do not have complete security patches because it's not possible to provide full security updates for the device without OEM support and they are intended to buy users some limited time to migrate to a supported device.
So, what exactly do people mean when they claim that third-party ROMs provide "long-term" support? Do they just allow older phones to run newer versions of Android, albeit without full security updates?
You’re just getting an updated OS.
Do you really keep them fully sync'ed? How do you sync photos?
Or by laws and regulations.
I hope the EU will do something practical in this area, since it seems to be the only entity capable of pushing some useful changes.
Example: the digital markets act, which will force companies like apple to allow for side loading of apps. No us entity even attempted at anything similar as far as i know.
(Which is also nice for long term support.)
> Apple can do it because they lock you into their walled garden
Samsung can do it because they're smart, but Apple does it because they're evil? Why doesn't Apple also have in house expertise?
> Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs.
Qualcomm seems like a scapegoat here. Google surely has expertise here. Isn't this sorely on Google?
Nobody said Apple are doing it because they're are evil, calm down.
Your parent said Apple can afford to give you longer support because they not only make money when they sell you the phone HW, they also keep making money from your iCloud, iTunes and every other third party subscription or SW you buy on Apple App store. Basically, they double dip and monetize you over the entire period of you owning the device. That's exactly what your parent said. Apple's walled garden affords them enough revenue to keep funding SW updates for your old Apple devices which Android makers can't do.
All the other Android makers, apart from Google, don't make any other money after they sell you the phone HW, since Google is the one earning 30% off Playstore sales, not Samsung, or the others HW makers. Therefore they can't afford to pay teams of SW devs to keep pushing you SW updated for your old phone, so many years after you stopped giving them money, especially since they depend on Quallcomm and other semi vendors giving them up to date drivers, which they won't do for free since semi makers also want to sell newer chips rather than supporting older ones for free.
Google could do like Apple in theory, since they own the whole ecosystem stack apart from the SoC and they do have the cash for it, but they don't want to do it because Google sucks at maintaining anything "old" long-term, especially HW, so they keep doing what Google does best and focus on the new shiny while sunsetting the older shinys.
It's ironic that Samsung offers longer Andorid updates for their flagships S-series, than Google themselves do for the Pixels. That says everying about Google.
Nonsense.
It’s because they have all the expertise in-house anyway, they get extremely good terms due to their weight and negotiation, and they figure if you don’t change phone now you might do so next year and they’ll get your money anyway. There’s no brand loyalty on the Android side, and fostering it seems impossible (even brand recognition efforts don’t seem to do much).
This incentivises them to support all their phones as long as technologically possible.
Other phone manufacturers have the opposite incentive, they want you to buy a new phone ASAP, since they earn nothing if you don’t buy a new phone.
From an e-waste perspective, Apple’s model is definitely better.
Funny way to spell “provide quality service compared to competitors”.
(1) Linux didn't fail, the desktop is already a joy to use imho. It is just waiting till it reaches critical mass, then the Year of the Linux Desktop will be nigh.
And that’s a problem that needs fixed. Out of any piece of software, the one that connects my hardware to my OS is probably one of the most important.
Although I find it dubious this alone is why Linux historically has failed at desktop. It certainly sucks to deal with, but at least people attempted to use Linux. Personally I would argue that people’s innate fear of change is the bigger problem, in my experience.
I don't think this is particularly relevant. IIRC Qualcomm hardware support includes a handful of binary blobs with restrictive licenses. So if there is a vulnerability in one of those OEMs can't fix it without Qualcomm's support. So it is impossible to promise longer support than Qualcomm will provide. In practice they may be able to support the device longer if they can work around security issues from outside the blob or if no security issues are found, but they can't guarantee it (and without a guarantee there is also less incentive to actually do it).
We are finally seeing Apple, Google and Samsung creating their own SOC with longer software support, hopefully that is enough to disrupt Qualcomm's shitty practices here.
Apple and Google make money off you for as long as you use your phone. Qualcomm only makes money when you buy it. Thus, Qualcomm has little incentive to maintain old chips for long. Not because they are evil, that would be another conversation, but because they only make money off newly sold phones.
I hate mobile computing. It's a pale shadow of what I imagine it could have been.
if you want the _pure_ android experience, aosp support for pixel hardware has traditionally been very good. (google posts signed binary blobs for google hardware and with the move to google silicon those blobs have been getting smaller or may be completely eliminated now)
What does this even mean?
If you're so concerned about not paying for anything, all you need is buy the phone from Apple. You don't have to pay for anything else.
The reason Apple can support their phones for longer is because they control most of the stack: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack...
Is there an iOS equivalent to F-Droid?
Not can’t, don’t want to.
If it‘s not going to save or make money, company isn’t going to bother. And Google is on a cost-cutting crusade right now so absent an external motivation it’s going to happen even less.
This is a marketing phrase that twists a negative into a positive. Its better to use more objective terms. Gardens give you a perceptions of flowers and fruits.
What is that called, an ironic phrase?
I would recommend against Google phones, while 'they just work', they have been forcing users via dark patterns to use their services more and more. Its quite easy to get stuck with a google drive monthly fee or use their Maps app which is full of ads.
What are you on about? Every version of iOS I've used the past 11 years, on every iPhone I've used, has been a buttery smooth experience compared to most (not all; most) things Android, and on top of that I've gotten over 5 years of OS/security updates for each model which is practically unheard of with Android OEMs.
The last time I had a Google phone was the 2012 Nexus, and I said never again. It had absolutely trash speakers and microphone. I couldn't be talking to someone when it was windy, I couldn't hear them. And when I tried recording a video at a sports stadium, the audio was completely distorted from the noise because the mic couldn't keep up with the noise.
Is the Pixel a good choice for people who spend the majority of their time on the road and not in a quiet office or home?
Overall 9/10 though! I hear the pixel 7 has a better modem
This answer is painfully obvious and posts like OP's shouldn't be allowed on Hacker News.
There is the Google Pixel. But it has limited updates and proprietary software for things like the camera. That camera is really nice though and it's as close as the Android experience Google intended to ship because this basically is Google's version of Android. I have the Pixel 6 and it's fine.
Nokia stays close to that but ships their own camera app. It too has limited updates that run out after a few years. Other than the camera software, it's basically "stock android". I'm not sure there even is a stock version for the camera at this point. There are plenty of alternative camera apps though. I always had a weak spot for open camera, which is nice. My previous phone was a Nokia 7 plus. The camera was not great but otherwise a fine phone.
The fairphone is probably the closest to what you want. But you are buying older hardware and at a premium. And fairphone OS is based on an older version of Android and also limited in time for updates. The updates run out at some point though they are pretty good at keeping the security patches going. Repairability is great though.
In short, long term support is hard to get. No-one seems to be willing/capable of doing that. At best you have phones that become unsupported at some point but at least allow you to install alternative firmware (without any promises or support).
Their track record is also good I would say. Fairphone 2 started with Android 5 and it currently offered Android 10 upgrade.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/997918043739...
Recently switched from FairphoneOS (the stripped, bloatfree, google-free Android) back to stock Android¹
Its updates are fast, steady and consistently good (and improving). The FP1 is ten years old, and still works (though android there is EOL and old, and spare parts no longer available), my FP2 and an FP3 work fine, I can still get parts and Android isn't too old. The hardware is slow, and old, though (e.g. no 5G, power hungry BT, puny camera by current standards). The FP4 is top notch. Spare parts are cheap (e.g. Replaceable battery only €29, new screen only €80), android 12 good enough. But it does have stuff like Google Meet or TV that I would like to remove but cannot.
¹I'm diabetic. Monitoring and Pump control is moving from dedicated electronics to native apps. And they often require Google Android, cannot or will not run on degoogled android. Same for banking and payment apps.
Fairphone 3 users despite still having "support" until next year are over a year behind Qualcomm and run the end of life Linux 4.9 kernel.
released in september 2019
I like Android though because compared to others I know with iPhones, there seems to be more ways to customize Android. Termux is one obvious example -- with a BT keyboard, feels like a pocket Linux device. I also use a different launcher as well as different browser and search engine.
I disagree. It overprocesses a lot and it's the worst on people's faces (very unnatural colors).
Other phone makers do that as well with various trade-offs. Samsung is better for portraits, but struggles in other places.
I miss my Huawei Mate 20 Pro, somehow it seems to me that today's flagships are still taking worse SOOC pictures than it.
It gets as many updates as other Android phones, and there is no blotware whatsoever. Not sure what your comments here are about the camera app. It's just an improved version to use the features of the pixel camera.
Very occasionally I need to bounce the cellular connection, I suspect because I land on an unsupported band/channel. Otherwise LineageOS runs on it like a charm.
It seems to be a common thread with interesting phones… back when there was still some buzz around Sailfish you couldn’t get a device running that in NA either, which may have contributed to that project fizzling. There’s a lot of mobile devs with disposable income you’re opting out of by not selling in North America.
Any suggestions?
Their phones are really solid but they do lag on OS updates, and their cameras are never good.
Cameras are always sub-par (partner has pixels, and I'm light years behind), although the latest is the least bad in comparison with her current phone.
Current one has survived most of me building a home extension with little damage...previous one developed an intermittent screen touch issue, but only after I dropped it 12 feet onto a concrete floor,so I can't complain on reliability either.
E.g. video on my moto would always be blurry due to bad de-noising settings used by stock software. mcpro24fps allowed me to take dramatically better videos. The difference was HUGE.
Same with photos. Custom gcam roms, after a long time of trying different ones and tweaking, gave me dramatically higher quality photos. Again, night and day difference.
So the hardware is fine; they shoot themselves in the foot with the software.
My brain went right to old Nokia phones and I thinking "Thank fuck it was a Motorola, back in the day you would have to had the foundations checked over if it had been an Nokia"
But yeah, Always been happy with Motorola G phones (bar the cvamera, but I'm not really a photo person anyway), I still have an old 2014 Moto G to test apps on old devices/Android.
Camera's definitely terrible, but I don't really use my phone camera all that much. Biggest advantage, IMO, is the <$150 price tag. It means when I trip and toss my phone into traffic, or forget to take my phone out of my pocket when going snorkeling, or drop my phone off the balcony of my apartment, I can just order a new one on Amazon, swap the SIM, and carry on with my life.
I wonder if there's an app that can do this now on any phone, but I hadn't thought to look until now.
On the non Moto phone I tried replicating it with Tasker. It worked... Sometimes. But it was a really cheap random Redmi model so that might have been the issue, more than the app itself.
It's nearly like shaking and uses the gyros because there's no touch interface there.
One slight warning, and I'm not even sure if it's completely true, but my G8+ is only a few years old and it has slowed to an absolute crawl. My current understanding is that this is because the flash storage is running out of writes and slowing down. If true, it means they used a sub-standard part with an unacceptably short lifespan.
I have a 9 pro. Has a single uninstallable app (OP store) and battery life is over a day.
But the headphone jack socket is basically unusable, because it is so worn, and I have similar issues with the USB-C socket, although that also depends on the cable.
Not sure what I'm gonna replace it with eventually, I'd just have a new battery if it was replaceable...
I've used custom ROMs for years, but never used Graphene.
My current phone is a Xiaomi Mi9T. With a custom ROM, to properly make use of the camera you need to flash a magisk module. Otherwise you are stuck with the stock android camera app which doesn't perform nearly as well.
This phone is on its last legs, the screen was smashed so I had to replace it with a cheaper LCD, which has affected battery life and sometimes is unresponsive.
Thinking about getting a used Pixel 6 and giving Graphene a go.
> Google Camera can take full advantage of the available cameras and image processing hardware as it can on the stock OS and does not require GSF or sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS. Direct TPU and GXP access by Google apps including Google Camera is controlled by a toggle added by GrapheneOS and doesn't provide them with any additional access to data. The toggle exists for attack surface reduction. Every app can use the TPU and GXP via standard APIs including the Android Neural Networks API and Camera2 API regardless.
> We aim to reduce the benefits of Google Camera compared to GrapheneOS Camera over time, especially on Pixels. Many features of Google Camera will end up being available for GrapheneOS Camera in the next year or so via CameraX extensions including more aggressive HDR+, Night Sight and Portrait. Video features such as slow motion and time lapse are likely further away than within the next year. These video features could potentially be provided via CameraX vendor extensions or could be implemented via our own post-processing of the video output. Panorama, Photo Sphere, Astrophotography, Motion Photos, Frequent Faces, Dual Exposure Controls, Google Lens, etc. aren't on the roadmap for GrapheneOS Camera. Video frame rate configuration and H.265 support should be available for GrapheneOS Camera in the near future via CameraX improvements along with DNG (RAW) support in the further future.
All the info: https://grapheneos.org/usage#camera
Meaning: every time you screw up (or get a new phone) you have to start all over, without the ability to restore a backup.
This can easily take many days worth of man-hours.
Source: I've tried.
The backup problem is a notorious problem with any Android phone, I don't understand what it has to do with custom ROMs.
> there's no way to take full backups on Android phone, rooted or not
Er, no? On the contrary, root is exactly how you get full backups on Android - with, I grant, the exception of whatever Android calls their secure element / TPM, which I've only ever seen affect 2FA apps.
(Added bonus: you can shed even more bloat by installing Graphene OS, something that requires a Pixel at the moment.)
It looks good, just a tiny bit bulky.
Not sure on how it will do long term.
My OnePlus has been serving me well for more than 3 years now.
Haven't they been around long enough now to answer that?
Pure Android experience with no bloatware, 2 full days of battery with moderate usage, a decent screen, fast, confortable to use, and also was cheap.
Nowadays most Android phones have plenty of bloat and lack some specifications unless you spend some money. It's sad how a cheap phone that were usable was €150 to €200 and now the bracket is between €300 and €350.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices
Note that the particular device unit (not model) must have an unlockable bootloader (so, probably not a unit that was solid by a carrier that disables this):
You might want to check this site out to see if your bank app works though: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Even if your app isn't listed there, there's still a chance that it'll work. Mine isn't listed on that site, but it still works with no issues.
The negative is the really really awful camera.
I understand that the latest Android systems require an account to initialize the device - they have disabled the "Skip" [connection to the Internet] button when you first turn them on.
I know in terms of privacy, Google is worse due to built in telemetry (and cloud based chromeos). If there is no security benefit either, then there doesn’t seem to be a major reason to prefer Google’s products over apple’s. Pixels aren’t much cheaper either (particularly considering the shorter support period).
My banking apps work fine, surprisingly. And some Google (Gmail, Phone, and Fi) apps too, surprisingly, but not all (eg Meet, Messages, and Fit)
If you are a nobody, there isn't a need to pay for the "latest and greatest". Security updates are a meme and just a way to add more bloat. Don't download apk's from unknown sources, use an adblocker and that's 99% of all attack vectors closed.
That only leaves pre-installed bloatware, a legitimate issue that can be solved with a few steps. The phone doesn't matter but get something android 10 or higher, their selective permissions are nice but you can go as low as android 6 without too many issues. But you might have app compatibility problems.
During phone setup, don't immediately connect to the internet.
If you can uninstall the apps do that. Otherwise, force stop and clear data of every installed app that you don't think you will ever use. As long as the apps don't open or take up ram or cpu cycles then the phone is functionally 'bloat free'
Remove all of the permissions that don't make sense. Your calendar doesn't need access to your microphone or even contacts.
Turn off all settings that even hint at telemetry including locations.
Once this is done, you can connect to the internet. Download fdroid through the browser and look for a local VPN that is capable of blocking access to apps and has a decent permissions menu. Get that configured and then you are good to go. The local vpn will almost certainly break things the first time you use it. But you can just tweak it and as long as you aren't installing any new apps very often you won't have any problems. Stick with open source apps as much as you can.
And only update Apps when they break or if there is a feature you really want. Don't actually do anything important on your phone like banking but if you have a browser with adblock then that's fine but keep it minimal.
I like this method because it's phone agnostic. I don't have to settle for a pixel or another phone that I need to get root on. If this sounds like too much and you don't want to flash a new OS, then just get an iphone.
What. Are you serious? You mean in general or on certain brands for example?
For computers, it depends but as long as you're not downloading sketchy shit and have an adblocker then you're fine.
And once again, all of this applies as long as you're a nobody, which is at least 70% of the population. Those who don't work in government, medical, aren't businesses etc.
Android manufacturers suck in terms of long term support.
Samsung offers the longest support, but their phones are full of bloat. and they recently passed some ToC updates that prevent you from suing them which I find a super anti-consumer move.
If you can compromise on long term support and don’t care much about photos, the Asus Zenfone 10 is probably your best bet
It's the only smartphone assembled in Germany so not sure if its available where you live.
for my mother i installed /e/OS myself, but if she had to get a new phone while i am not around i'd point here to that website and tell her to get one of those.
/e/OS is free of bloat, yet easy to use.
You can load at least a few different alternative operating system, but finding one that will give me at the very least Signal is proving difficult.
The best options are:
- Google Pixel
- Motorola
- Nokia
I ended up with a Google Pixel 7. The Motorola Edge 40 was a close contender, but I ended up axing it from the list due to the curved screen edge. My selection criteria were: cleanest Android possible; latest Android version; long-term support; wireless charging; decent IP rating.
My previous phones were a Moto G2 and Nokia 6.1, for comparison. The first one replaced due to the charging port dying and running out of storage, the second one having its screen destroyed by dropping it on a tile floor.
It's also trivial to install thanks to their web installer.
Best buy trip to working grapheneOS took under an hour.
For example, it makes it easier to disable the search on the home screen, and many other tweaks. I also like being able to hide apps from the list of all apps, but they are still accessible using the search. It helps make the bloatware less visible (ex: I don't use the Youtube app, or most other pre-installed apps).
I use a Pixel 6 with very few features from Google, and happy with it. Long-term support is the only issue, although they do offer 5 years for security updates, which is better than previous Google models.
I've not seen any. There are growing collections of debloat scripts that use adb and do not require rooting the phone but it's hit and miss per model as to completeness and not breaking the OS startup. Some vendors lock down their bloat so that rooting is required and in my opinion those should get returned / refunded and the product reviews on sites such as Amazon should warn others rather than rooting the phone. I've returned a few. My uleFone had the least cruft on it and the least lockdown but still uses upwards of 4GB ram after my first pass so I still have a long way to go.
The 7a has poorer battery life than the 6a/7 so its a poorer choice for my personal use case but ymmv. Otherwise the 6a runs about 3 days for me (got 4 out of it initially but I use my phone very little) or 2 days when driving and needing more usage out of it.
A pixel with grapheneOS, calyxOS or /e/OS would be the next best thing.
They come without really any bloat, but most models are also well supported by LineageOS, GrapheneOS or others if you wanted to get more privacy.
My Pixel 5 is a perfect phone. Stable (125+ days uptime a few times), fast, no Samsung style bloat.
Or of course a Pixel, though if you don't use all of Google's stuff you might consider they come with more 'pre-installed bloatware'. They'll also probably always be supported by Lineage, so you could install that when official updates dry up, or just from day one to avoid 'bloat'.
No Android phone is going to give you the same level of long-term support. iPhones have zero bloatware and you can uninstall first party applications. You’ll get OS releases the day they come out regardless of your phone model.
