So recently I’ve been seeing the trend where Android OEMs such as Google, Samsung, etc. have been extending their software release times up to like five, six, and seven years after device release. Clearly, phone hardware has gotten to the point where it can support software for that long, and computers have been in that stage for a very long time. From what I can tell, the only OEM that does this currently might be Fairphone.
Edit: The battery is the thing that goes the fastest so manufacturers could just offer new batteries and that would solve a lot of the problem.
They could have always supported software for that long. They simply refused to.
There is no benefit to slowing the release cycle. All of the research gets done either way, all of the supply chain modifications get made either way, and as an individual you have no need to replace your phone every year. A multi-year release cycle does very little but screw over people who need a new phone during the wrong point in the release cycle, while also substantially complicating the supply chains by making demand much spikier.
Conservation wise there is a very big reason to slow down the release cycle
No, there isn’t. People who are buying new phones every year are trading them in, and they’re going to other people who are more price conscious.
Manufacturing several year old tech results in brand new hardware with a shorter life cycle. You’re not going to get 5 or 10 years of updates on a phone that was 5 years behind tech advancement when you bought it.
The people chasing novelty would do so by jumping manufacturers instead, so you don’t change their behavior at all.
And like you said, sometimes you need to replace a phone.
Maybe it was lost, or destroyed.
Compare with the yearly release cycle on cars.
People apparently use installment plans for phone purchases these days, along with a downstream used market, so it’s actually a really apt analogy.
That is kind of my thought. Phone technology doesn’t change drastically within two years and a car does not change drastically within two years.
But people are constantly buying millions of both, so makes sense to have small yearly updates and major revisions every few years.
Which is basically how both phones and cars are developed now.
Good points
Edit: Though there was the point in the early to mid-2010s where hardware was improving so rapidly that it would have been infeasible to not replace it as soon as possible.