Once again I look at Sundar Pichai and ask, what is the point of you? Under his stewardship, Android has lost all signs of life. The Android community is dead. There’s been no innovation and the little bits of innovation they had created in recent years were quickly sunset. The last selling point of a Pixel was the quick updates and long update life but now everyone offers seven years. No identity, no community, no selling point, just blandness! They don’t even leverage their money to offer cheaper hardware, the Pixel Tablet with Dock is compelling in its form factor, but upon closer look, it’s less than mid-range specs, sub-par speaker performance and all with an over inflated price. At least eat the cost so that you can get one or two of these in every home. The only thing that’s impressed me in recent years is bundling the watches.
i don’t think they like the android community much since a lot of the community is dedicated toward getting away from the surveillance and theft that Google profits from.
Well if they would think more than 1 financial quarter ahead of things, they’d realize that they will lose customers to competition, thereby ruining both device sales and data gathering profits.
What shocks me, and I do mean shocks me, is what this line of thinking implies. Is the data google (tries to) gather from me really worth more $ than, say, an average of 350$ each year? Cause thats just 1 phone every 2-3 years and I’m looking into a tablet, and wearables eventually. I refuse to believe any knowledge about me is unique and valuable enough to beat that, and it seriously confuses me.
The last selling point of a Pixel was the quick updates and long update life
And I thought it was the ability to re-lock bootloader with a custom key which is why Graphene OS is only developed for Pixels.
I really need to install Graphene and have a proper play with it.
It’s not that exciting, but that’s a good thing - it works very well and is very similar to a stock experience!
You talk about android then bring up random points about the pixel phones. Those are two separate things. One could say android is doing well because multiple manufacturers have adopted the 7 year policy that google initially put forward. I mainly use iOS so not an android fanboy, but your rant isn’t really making a coherent point.
They’re not concerned with product, they’re concerned with profit. They’re strategically cutting away bits and pieces that don’t make money. Incidentally, these are all the fun and exciting bits, leaving behind the blandness.
That’s a boring answer but it is sadly true for Google and every other big tech company currently. They focused on massive growth for years off the back of heavy investment but now that the financial climate is bad and interest rates are up, all these companies suddenly need to refocus the business around profitability. It’s why this wave of enshittification has hit the internet within the last few years.
Despite Sundar’s leadership, do you think that extending update support to 7 years took no innovation? The Android team has been doing major system reworks to make this practical. The Tensor team has been working to do the same on the hardware side. Samsung is likely reusing firmware and software from that work given that the hardware is shares a lot of Samsung IPs. Prior to these developments Samsung was not interested in providing anywhere close to this length of support.
Android is in the best place it’s ever been since its release. It’s on more things than ever and we have the kind of update support we used to only dream about in 2008. And we have devices with unlockable and rekockable bootloaders. 🤯
Samsung committed to seven years before Google and look at the length of support Apple were offering. Maybe we have different definitions of innovation.
Maybe I’m out of the loop when did Samsung commit? Isn’t the article about it happening now?
Sorry, I remembered incorrectly and thus my information was wrong. They offered four years back when Google was only offering two
https://www.sammobile.com/news/galaxy-phone-seven-years-security-updates/
They didn’t, Google are the first to do three years of OS updates and security patches with the Pixel 2 and extended that to the first gen Pixel. Samsung were doing two OS updates until they promised they would do 3 OS updates at the Note20 launch and extended it to the S10 and other models. You are correct that they upgraded that to four with the S21 before Google made the jump from 3 to 7.
This is old news, 5 months old. I thought they meant more manufacturers apart from google and samsung.
That is good news.
Cynical me says there’s some sort of catch though. They are commiting themselves to sell fewer phones. How else are they going to make their money?
Then again perhaps they are accepting they can’t keep going on as they have been.
This is for the S series lineup. Samsung still have their A series and M,F,C series in other markets.
The article says “manufacturers” but then only mentions Samsung in the article…
Not exactly a surprise tbh because they have to compete with iPhone. And I bet it’s only for flagship devices. I can’t see the budget devices getting this.
That’s typical clickbait: give a vague title to make people click.
Google is also giving support for its Pixel devices since the Pixel 8 line.
And their Pixel 8a is also going to get 7 years of support, which is neat.Hopefully others follow.
Ignoring the fact that few folks keep the same device for 7 yrs to begin with, this is only good news for app support life.
The actual title of the topic should be:
“Android app support is getting even better”
This is essentially a nothing burger for hardware in the grand scheme of things but sure. We’ll take it. Whatever.
I suppose it’s a pretty big win for the aftermarket selling off older devices. More than a few brands still absolutely refuse to adopt this, however. Looking at you, Motorola.
What about the battery? I doubt they support free battery replacements for 7 years…
That would be too far fetched in reality.
They should at least make it easy to buy a genuine battery over that lifespan. Nobody should have to browse eBay & AliExpress for a replacement component that could theoretically explode.
Manufacturers should also be forced to promote battery recycling practices & initiatives too. They are tossing endless amounts of them onto rubbish piles via planned obsolescence and yearly updates.
Insane request.
Attempts have been made to improve battery longevity in software, but at the end of the day battery chemistry sets the rules.
I’m all for consumer protection, but I don’t think demanding new hardware for free is reasonable at all. Making them easily available and replaceable would be.
It’s an alternative idea for a removable battery that they don’t want to give back to the consumers, not even the steam deck has this. Software updates are nice, but the batteries are still the main limiting factor on a phones usability. I know getting free battery replacements is asking too much, but their dark patterns are as well. Corporations have way too much leeway, power, and protections; I don’t care if they get hit hard with changes that help consumers.
