I'm still using my Galaxy S8 with only one problem: Verizon's voicemail app won't run on something this old. Every other app is fine. It figures that the only app that encourages me to upgrade is from the phone company.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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On a general note I would say for the individual consumer it doesn't matter so much if they keep releasing yearly, we just don't have to buy yearly.
It's kind of a waste of resources for the manufacturers supporting more models than necessary. If that leads to shorter support schedules that's when it impacts us. But as you observed they seem to be lengthening at the moment.
I'm currently on a Pixel 6 from 2021, that I bought used from someone who was chasing the latest and greatest. I have no reason for changing yet. After October 2026 when support ends I'll see if I have to migrate to Graphene OS or something. If no secure path forward exists I may have to get newer hardware then.
From what I can tell, the only OEM that does this currently might be Fairphone.
Does what? I don't see anything in the sentences before that "this" could refer to.
Apparently they use one of the faster IoT chips that's supported for like 10 years.
There is no CPU that is ever going to be supported for 10 years for a consumer application. ARM CPUs today are 20x faster than they were 10 years ago, and the ARM/RISC-V chips a decade from now will likely be 10-20x faster than today.
Regardless, the Kryo 670 CPU in the Fairphone 5 is already 3.5 years old, and it's not super special, it's just a semi-custom Snapdragon SoC. Consider that 4G LTE launched 13 years ago in the USA, and in 10 years that Kryo chip in the FP5 will be older than that. Could you handle the performance of your last 3G phone today?
There is quite a large delta between 512 KVPS 3G and even rather slow 4G at say like 10 MBPS which allows you to stream 1080p video etc. Yes 10 MBPS is not super fast for downloading but it will get your tasks done within a decent time.