As an IPhone holder I’m happy Google is doing this to force the market to support devices for longer. Apple will be pushed to go further than 6-7 years of software support.
Yeah. Pixel 8 and 9 series have 7 years by spec. I think Samsung matched it with their latest Galaxy S series. It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.
Samsung’s update policy for their lower end models is pretty atrocious. While on paper they offer updates for a couple of years, it you look more closely, you’ll notice that the update intervals get larger and larger as time goes on. You might not get important updates for half a year. Sure, still better than not updates at all, but a pretty awful policy for security updates.
Makes sense. I suspect they’re selling more of those overall so they like replacing them more often. The only reason they’re providing longer support for the S-series is because someone else does too. They have made their own SoC (Exynos) for more than a decade and there wasn’t anyone stopping them supporting the models with that SoC for longer. They didn’t.
It’s one of those rare and fleeting moments when competition works to our benefit.
More competition is always better for the consumer.
For the Pixel 6 and 7 series Google has promised 5 years of security updates right from the beginning. What’s new here is that they now also offer feature and OS upgrades for that same time period. Certainly nice to have, but not essential.
As a pixel 6a user I’m excited I’ll get a few more years of support and use out of this phone.
Sweet. This will likely mean extended GrapheneOS support too.
GrapheneOS would have received feature updates for the full duration of 5 years anyway, since they don’t separate feature updates from security updates.
Open source…forever software updates until nobody cares to update the bloody thing.
Android is as closed as an open-source project can get.
You would like postmarket os as it is foss and software support is 10 years atleast.
Huh, they support a lot more hardware than they used to, that’s pretty amazing! I may have to try it out.
Any idea if MMS is supported properly yet? That has been my main hurdle, and it looks like my other issues (battery life and audio quality) may be resolved by picking other hardware than the PinePhone.
Any idea if MMS is supported properly yet? That has been my main hurdle, and it looks like my other issues (battery life and audio quality) may be resolved by picking other hardware than the PinePhone.
Good news MMS has been functional since 2021.
Really? I thought it got stuck and you had to run a script periodically to get it unstuck. If it’s truly reliable and supports pictures and group chats, I’ll have to find a compatible device and check it out.
The PinePhone HW looks a bit rough, so hopefully one of the community supported devices works well and has better battery life and audio quality
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113603951027289464
Android doesn’t have any long term support branches for older versions of the mobile OS.
It was clear they’d likely provide 5 years of OS updates for 6th/7th gen Pixels rather than 3 from the start. Documentation clearly hinted at it by saying they’d provide 5 years of security AND features updates.
If only they would send me a free volume button since their factory one broke…
Good thing my pixel 6 battery is marshmallow now and I was forced to buy a new phone 2 weeks ago…
My Pixel 6’s batterie is already pretty weak :/
Replace the battery :)
Here’s some BS. My phone’s battery replacement cost $220. ($100 for battery, and $120 to be serviced) That was the same price as buying a refurbished version of the upgrade.
I missed the days of just replacing the battery with a screwdriver.
Im looking forward for “User replaceable batteries” 2027 in EU.
I bought the Pixel 7 Pro and omg it was hot garbage, they had an unresolved bug open for like 3 months that caused scrolling to basically work only sometimes. It was impossible to use I had to return it within a week. Worse phone buy I’ve had in ~15 years.
