Why can computers, like even very old laptops can seemingly get OS updates forever, while mobile devices hardly get a few years of updates before getting stuck out of date?
Why can computers, like even very old laptops can seemingly get OS updates forever, while mobile devices hardly get a few years of updates before getting stuck out of date?
Even with android custom ROMs like Lineage, support eventually ends. Meanwhile, you can just slap on linux onto any old computer and its still getting the latest updates. 🤔
Why not just do the same thing with phones? Forever phone updates? 👀
Locked bootloaders and non-standardized binaries reqd to boot hardware.
Driver issues. For starters, ARM is protecting its Mali drivers like a dragon.
in the case of Android, it comes down to the proprietary driver modules that are compiled for certain kernel versions. As newer versions of android are released with newer kernels, the closed source modules fall out of step. If the drivers for these components were open source anyone could recompile them for any Linux kernel. It's usually up to the device manufacturer working with the likes of the chip makers to release newer module versions for their hardware. OEMs dont want to support their hardware beyond few years, so you'll hopefully buy a new phone.
The postmarketOS community (and some of the android community) works pretty hard trying to bring mainline kernel support to devices, which enables them to run generic Linux kernels, or conceivably newer versions of android than the OEM has released. But this involves reverse engineering support for this hardware.
Windows is designed to work on a very wide range of specs, so older devices as well as low-end newer devices should be able to run it.
That’s even more true about Linux. Many popular distros can be run on a raspberry pi, a 20 year old MacBook, or a state-of-the-art gaming desktop.
It’s less true about macOS because Apple has more control over the hardware so they can be pickier. Mobile developers also have more control over the hardware and can be pickier, although that’s less true about Android than iPhone.
Simple. We let them get away with it. Compare:
"Your PC is out of date" "Don't be stupid, it's only 2 years old and still works fine" with
"Your phone is out of date" "OK I'll buy a new one".
There needs to be a lot more of Answer A to Statement B.
The stupidity with phones gets even worse when you consider the hardware in them and how little of it people really use... Androids are literally pocket-sized laptops.
Install Tasker and you've got a pretty serious workhorse.
Install Termux and it's next level. Especially if you use proot to install a full Linux environment.
Computers have systems (BIOS, EFI, ACPI) that give the people who make the machine responsibility for providing a standard, publicly-defined way for the OS to enumerate the hardware, and to use the hardware in a basic way even if the OS has never heard of it. Linux can get a kernel panic on the screen even if it has no idea what your GPU is, because EFI understands it and Linux understands EFI. It is set up this way partly because there's a real possibility of hardware being added or removed, partly because people routinely mix and match parts, and partly because IBM mistakenly designed a good system that was easy to work in and not one that kept them in business.
Phones (and phone-derived systems like the Raspberry Pi and other single-board computers) don't implement a standard. The hardware and its boot process assumes tight integration between the hardware and the software, usually to the point where the bootloader refuses to load anything not signed by the device manufacturer, unless it is satisfied that it has been given that manufacturer's permission to be unlocked. (Computer secure boot implementations generally trust, for example, Microsoft, as well as the machine owner, who can load their own keys.)
Instead of the CPU developers releasing example EFI implementations, they release forks of the Linux kernel that they maintain as long as that chip is the latest chip they sell, and then fork off the mainline kernel again for their next chip. And the device makers ship devices by starting with the chip maker's kernel, customizing it for the device, giving it a "device tree" that tells it everything that is supposed to be in that particular device, and shipping it. For a few years they port patches from the current kernel onto this forked kernel, and then they stop. With no standard to develop software against, and no documentation for what's in a device and how to use it like there is for the standard's interfaces, the only practical way to run software on a device is to start with that patched kernel.
Mainline Linux refuses to adopt and maintain the chip and device makers' low-quality, chip-and-board-specific kernel changes (often because they break the kernel for other uses), so you can't generally use a mainline Linux kernel instead. If you tried to tease out and improve the device-specific patches to the point where mainline Linux would take them, the device would be hopelessly outdated by the time you were done and you would have dozens of job offers to occupy your time as a highly skilled embedded Linux developer. The work is not practical given the tiny number of people who would benefit from it for a particular device, and how little it pays off compared to just buying a new device with a more up to date forked kernel available.
"Maintaining" a device for LineageOS or other open software eventually collapses under the weight of mainline Linux's changes and the necessary chip and device maker patches no longer being practically reconcileable.
PC operating systems are, at least to a broad degree, generic. That's because a huge amount of backwards compatibility is built right into the PC architecture, much to the delight or chagrin of everybody depending on who you ask. There's silicon on your processor's die right now that's doing fuck-all except ensuring that if you were struck by the perverse urge, you could boot MS-DOS 1.0 onto it even though it's virtually guaranteed that you never will.
Phone operating systems absolutely are not generic, because each phone model is basically unique unto itself in terms of what hardware is in it, and backwards compatibility is not in any way a design goal. Furthermore, the entire package has to be rolled into a single unified ROM image.
There are proprietary core components in phones, notably their SoCs (systems-on-a-chip) and modems (which are often built into the SoC) which their designers jealously guard and are loaded down with patents and other IP restrictions. This hardware requires closed source drivers which must be updated or at the very least recompiled for new kernel versions if the OS is to be updated. That's for Android, anyhow. It's even worse for Apple devices, because they're entirely closed and Apple is in total control of both the hardware and the software. At least they bother to support their own devices with updates for quite some time, but even they're not absolved of fuckery -- see, for instance, the deliberate slowing-down-with-updates scandal from a few years ago.
If nobody is providing source code or compatible binaries for the core hardware your phone needs in order to work, at minimum it's going to be impossible to update your device beyond the kernel version that was last supported on it, even with a custom ROM. And all of this is before getting into locked bootloaders and other chicanery that prevents you from running your own code outside of user space on the hardware even if you had the code to run.
At the end of the day: The hardware vendors are absolutely not interested in providing driver support to end users or source code to anyone, and the handset makers and most especially the cell service carriers, at least in the US where the majority of people buy or lease their phones from said carriers, literally have a vested interest in dropping support as soon as they can get away with it. That's because rolling out updates to oodles of individual phone models costs money to do, but they only make more money off of you by selling you a new phone.
I'd like to point out that this:
see, for instance, the deliberate slowing-down-with-updates scandal from a few years ago.
this never happened. What you may be referring to is Batterygate where they would intentionally throttle older devices based on their age and presumed battery degradation in order to give the devices a longer life span. The roll out of which did not go as smoothly. The articles also mention that since iOS 11 / iPhone 11 the phones have better battery management and monitoring.
My 11 Pro that I have bought in 2020 April is still working as well as on the day of purchase. This is after one battery swap in 2024 April, when battery degraded below 80% capacity and the system announced that performance would be throttled. It is expected that the 11 Pro lineup will retain new updates until at least 2026 September.
Now here's the thing: these newer iPhone Pro models age so well, with just a battery swap every ~3-4 years, I wouldn't be surprised if some movement in the EU will step up to force legislation on extending support for them. But still, six years of support is pretty good compared to most other vendors.
This is changing. Microsoft is trying to restrict Windows 10 -> uploads based on having a user-hostile TPM module to make PCs more locked down, just like phones.
user-hostile TPM module
I mean, the module itself is fine. Some linux distros can also take advantage of that with full disk encryption, instead of putting keys in the ram, store in in TPM which make it harder for keys to get extracted if it gets stole while on.
But of course microsoft is gonna try to use it nefariously for some DRM stuff.
Wasn't microsoft the only phone manufacturer to ship a standard uefi on their devices? I mean before they eventually scraped what was left off of nokia.
I don't think this is going to change the overall situation, it's just a single point new system requirement, like the plausible GPU was for Vista.
Now, if they start expiring the old TPMs every few years, and Windows 12 needs a TPM 4.0 or something, then this will change the overall situation. At least on the Windows side.
The fact that perfectly capable PCs aren't getting security updates is just part of it. Once Microsoft and other corporations can ensure that your computer is no longer completely controlled by the user (as the TPM ensures) they can start locking it down, first in the name of security, but then just like how some phones have apps that you can't uninstall, or how printers force you to use name brand ink at a huge markup.
Because they are incentivizing us to buy new phones. It's not a technical reason it's a capitalism reason.
Wasn't one of the phone companies found to be purposely slowing down older phones with each new update
That was Apple
With that username, I trust this answer completely.
and now people , some of thema re. realizing the current iteration of phones, iphones,, samsungs are really no different from the last few generations.
Part of this is because the device has to connect to cellphone towers where the radio equipment is on its own lifecycle path and eventually replaced.
Eventually the feature set of a device is too outdated for the carrier's network to syooort it.
Developer time is limited and so there is little to no value using that time to support very old hardware that would be WiFi only.
Even for Linux there is a end of life for devices: https://linuxiac.com/linux-kernel-to-drop-support-for-legacy-i486-and-early-586-cpus/
The difference to phones is that around Linux everything is open source so that some poor shmuck ho still has this old computer and is capable can keep supporting it for everyone. When it comes to phones it's much more difficult because a lot of the parts are closed source. Similarly to Mac OS and Windows.
On Mobile OS updates are tied to firmware updates while on PC they're completely seperate. Its also a severe issue on Arm based Linux PCs, if they loose support or worse never had Linux support they can be nearly impossible to use.
Planned obsolescence to a degree. If you spend $1k a year on a new phone the C suite makes happy faces, but of you spend $1k every few years the C suite makes sad faces. What better way to keep them happy by stopping support for a device.
I mean, I guess my question is: "Why don't they pull the same shit on computers then?"
Microsoft makes money supporting their OS on older hardware for businesses. That has gone on long enough they have to continue, and they might as well share it with everyone else.
They're trying to, but market adoption has said so far that we're unwilling to tolerate it.
PC = General Purpose
Mobile devices = Purpose builtCorporate greed.
x86 hardware interfaces are traditionally pretty well documented and standardized, going back to the original IBM PC in the 1970s(?), enabling among other things an aftermarket of plug-in expansion cards and other peripherals. That standardization also makes it possible to write device drivers and keep them working.
ARM stuff on the other hand is closed and changes all the time. So this year's peripheral won't work with last year's phone. Mac stuff is also like that, maybe not quite as much most of the time.
When I bought my phone 5 years ago, 128G of storage seemed limitless. Now it appears to be a tightening constraint. Should I be able to increase that storage, I wouldn't even be thinking of a new phone. Sadly, Samsung removed storage expansion from their flagships.
Sadly, Samsung removed storage expansion from their flagships.
Behold!
(Not my image, I stole it from reddit)
This appears to be an iPhone, but you can do the same with any phone, just use double-sided tape xD
This is amazing, hahah
I considered this for myself. Seeing the enclosures linked, I might look into that. My wife would probably veto it if it gets in the way or a child can to it apart easily.
just use double-sided tape
Could be a good use for one of those cases with slots for cards. Slide the drive in the slot, cut a hole for the USB C jack at the bottom, et voila.
The way that Google and Apple approaches programming is a little obtuse and it never gets out of the way.
Without someone like Linus Torvalds rewriting a whole new approach to mobile phones we're all stuck with the majority offerings from lock-in corporations.
Then there's telcos and manufacturers who never get out of the way either. So, even if we run to changemakers like FDroid the desired compatibility is still limited by a cacophony of weird restrictions and unknown difficulties.
With mobile phones we need to start manufacturing with Open Source to get the compatible-mobiles industry up to standards first. It's not something that's happening because those guys are far too retired to come back to a new front for machine compatibles - it's 80s stuff.
Also, a non-java scheme would be a better way to go. Java development is all about using giant washing machines to spin out compilations from esoteric versions of fragile code. Having code that didn't break every year would be great too.
Directly from my ass, it's my assumption that the primary maintainers just don't have an incentivize the cost of supporting older devices and the disparate hardware configurations.
Like, planned obscellesance or not, smartphone churn is going to happen anyways. People lose them, smash them, fall into a pool with them, decide they NEED the newer camera soldered into them, etc...
It's not like there are old phones in a closet somewhere propping up business critical infrastructure like with computers.
The cost vs utility of maintaining forward features and security patches for a massive catalog of hardware configurations just isn't there.
I think it has a bit to do with a lot of firmware or drivers being closed source too. I feel like a couple years ago I ran into that issue with camera my old Android phone had
