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Yikes, that was almost $1k phone, not even 5 years of support; my condolences.
I've got a Note 9 and it's in a similar situation. It's especially frustrating because you can't really unlock the NA versions due to US Carriers basically demanding it gets 'locked down'.

So I can't even run a custom ROM on it if I wanted to. There was a brief window when they could be unlocked but Samsung patched that. Now I'm in a situation where I don't want an iPhone or a Samsung but there's scant little else for premium Androids. Really liked my last Sony, but they're hit and miss for NA releases.

Might eyeball an Asus at some point if they have a less 'gamer-y' premium phone at some point.
 
Any issues running it without updates? Certain apps crashing or unable to get certain apps due to outdated android? etc.


Moving on from my iPhone 6s. Was released in 2015 and the last updates will be this year; so about a ~7 year run.
Looking at the PIxel phones, and they're all going to stop getting updates around the 2 - 3 year mark. Security updates a bit longer.

Other option is to get the iPhone SE 2020, which is reasonably priced right now for a refurbished one with warranty. If it's anything like the first SE, it'll get updates until ~2026, which is pretty good for $300. The Pixel 4(a) is the same price, but that's only supported until next year, which is crap.

I want to move away from Apple but the Android value is so bad. Unless software updates just isn't that important; anyone still rocking a Pixel 1-3?

Fairphone will be my go-to once it's in North America. Right now, it's going to cost an equivalent of ~$900 CAD with no warranty or access to replacements parts outside of Europe.
I'm still rocking Pixel 2 as my EDC. Still on vanilla and no issues.
Its battery life just gets through a day, or maybe I have to top up at least once if I use it heavily.

I have a Pixel 6 Pro as well, just too large for me to carry around all the time.
What's your ideal budget?
 
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I'm still using the xiaomi miA1 as a burner/streaming device, it's on Android 9 I believe. Any other social media app I run on it works fine enough, Twitter might lag the odd time but otherwise it's fine. I don't use automatic updates however and I feel one of the last few updates I did apply to it caused most of the lag.

Pixels are overrated imho. I accepted the Android 13 upgrade on my 4a as soon as it was available and I started to regret it within hours. I'm a firm believer in not fixing something that isn't broken but I let that rule slide with my phone. Sure monthly 'security' patches might ease the nerves of system admins out there but for the average joe user like me they break as much as they fix. On Pixels especially so. I would have no problem going with another brand for my next phone.
 
Android 7.1 and newer for the most part is still quite well supported. However there are some serious issues in Android 7.0 and older that a lot of people will just bump the minimum supported API to 25 (Android 7.1+) instead of bothering to try and deal with issues on devices that old.

Screen Shot 2022-08-29 at 1.11.07 PM.png
Starting a new android project it even prompts me to start at 25 as a minimum supported version. You can also see here that adoption of Android 10+ is actually quite poor in the grand scheme of things, I'd say even adoption of Android 9.0 isn't ideal.
 
I guess nothing has really changed. I tried custom ROMs years back for out of date phones, and it was a lot of work to get it running properly and even then the ROMs would have bugs here and there. Randomly crashing or things not working.
In this regard, Project Treble has helped tremendously, assuming the phone supports it. That basically split the "device" from the "OS", more like your desktop computer.

A lot of people build custom ROMs based upon this now: https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations as it takes the AOSP image and puts in some device-specific tweaks.

But overall, I'd say Android follows the normal mobile provider lifecycle of a 2-3yr contract where you get a new "free" device at renewal.
 
Whoa, so Google made it easier for manufacturers to update the software and they still stop after 2-3 years to create more e-waste?
Fuck these Android manufacturers; that is so disappointing. I really can't wait until Fairphone hits Canada.

What is this chart supposed to represent? Whoever made this chart doesn't seem to understand how percentages work or it's poorly labeled.
If you build an app with that as the minimum supported APK that is the percentage of total devices that you would support. API 29 as your minimum for example 62.8% of global devices is what you would support or your alienating 37.2% of devices. That's why it is called a distribution percentage.
 

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