I have a Pixel 4a (with Calyx) for a few years already (start of 2021) and it's still going great. The battery is okay. Everything works nice. It's smooth. It runs everything perfectly fine.
This makes me glad to see that hardware wise this phone was really built to last, I can't even count how many times I dropped it so hard that I was scared to see the damage (which was always either nothing or a broken screen protector)
But software wise I'm screwed as security updates are already gone from Google and I only get the extended support from Calyx which will also end soon.
Now I'm forced to choose between having a phone that is insecure or buying a new one.
So thanks Google for the high quality hardware, but what's up with this software planned obsolescence??
I know this isn't exactly right to repair, but it also kind of is because if Google decided to ditch the 4a, they should be forced to open source the software so that the public can actually repair it.
I'm sure that some of their latest updates can be modified slightly to work for the 4a, but they don't care and for them this is a win-win since they don't have to maintian support and they get new customers who would otherwise be satisfied with an "old" phone.
What happened to the days when an old phone meant a phone that was already crumbling to pieces, and not a fully functional computer that is slightly older then a toddler?
This is why I run with Apple. Because even though their repairability sucks even more than Android, they are built like tanks and they get six to seven years of full OS updates, and not just security patches.
And the security patches continue for another year or two after that.
Nothing else comes close. Sure, the big players in Android have now claimed five years of OS updates, but I was promised Android 13 with my Nokia 7.2, yet I am still on the original Android 11 that the phone came with - Nokia never even released 12, much less 13 for that model.
I will believe these vendors once they are actually pushing Android v.X+5 to a phone that launched with v.X.
Apple is not an option for me as they are completely closed source and super invasive of customer privacy (their privacy claims are "only we will know everything about you" which is creepy AF)
On the same concept I can also say that hou should just use a linux phone as these are very likely to be kept updated for years, but it's not really a reasonable option for this situation.
Completely false. If you enable advanced data encryption, your iCloud data is encrypted such that even Apple cannot access it.
Which is why they introduced Legacy Contacts for next of kin… if someone with an iPhone dies, and their relatives want access to the deceased’s data but no-one knows the phone passcode or the iCloud credentials and don’t have legacy access, they can spend hundreds of millions of dollars suing Apple and Apple will be unable to provide access.
As someone who has actually worked on a system like this in another capacity, it really does works as advertised.
Sure, your iCloud data is encrypted, but what about all the metadata that Apple collects from your phone or on the files in iCloud? What about everything else you're doing on your phone? It's not just about having access to the data of your files.
Also, not having encryption on by default is creepy and purposeful.
New Google Pixels come with 7 years of security updates and 7 major Android updates. With GrapheneOS you generally geht all AOSP updates. https://grapheneos.org/faq#recommended-devices After that GrapheneOS offers 3 years of harm reduction updates https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-lifetime New Samsung devices (like the S24) also come with 7 years of security updates + 7 Android Version updates.
Get back to me when an Android phone that was released with Android 15 gets an OTA update from the manufacturer to Android 22.
My experience with the Nokia 7.2 (and a few others) leads me to strongly suspect that these “promises” are nothing more than pinkie swears from everyone short of Google itself.