[I]t's too bad that the support lifecycle of the most consistently updated Android devices is so much shorter than what Apple achieves with iOS, especially since the hardware should still be more than capable of supporting Nougat.
My 2013 Nexus 7 is perfectly fine... except for now being left behind, software-wise.
I bought once / as soon as I learned that its successor had not been worth waiting for. So, I got significantly less than 3 years out of it. Would have bought the successor, except...
Guess I'll be rooting it. And buying Apple, next time.
Android 6 is very likely to be supported for quite some time by app developers, it's not like you're missing out on much by not running the latest version of the OS.
Exactly! I own this device and still use it often...I see no reason to stop using it. It received a security patch just recently, and I don't feel that missing out on further updates will impact watching YouTube videos
Yeah. First world problem, or whatever. But, like my 2013 Moto X, it's irritating to get less than 2 years out of a multiple hundred dollar product that otherwise is fine.
And I would have bought the successor to the Nexus 7, except there was none, really -- nothing comparable and problem free (in addition to the price bump and larger size, the 9 had issues, initially, IIRC).
And... after the Moto X, and observing how quickly my parents' Samsung tablet on Verizon was abandoned, I wasn't willing to get a tablet other than a Nexus, i.e. one receiving support and updates directly from Google.
My point, finally, is that even going Nexus is no longer a way to get reasonable support for a product, it seems. I've gotten pretty tired of Google and company's game of musical chairs, with respect to hardware.
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P.S. I post these comments, occasionally, here on HN also because I know Googlers still swing by and read them.
The only means of feedback I've ever found to Google.
Enough people push enough negativity through Google's version of the reality distortion field, and at least an initiative gets launched. Thing is, Google, you need to stick with it -- one of them -- sooner or later.
> First world problem, or whatever. But, like my 2013 Moto X, it's irritating to get less than 2 years out of a multiple hundred dollar product that otherwise is fine.
I have a Nexus S, a Nexus 4, and a Nexus 5. The 5 is dead; I don't think it's recoverable. The 4 is dying; it runs fine but the battery is expanding. The S, to this day, has no hardware problems. But despite the availability of up-to-date cyanogenmod builds for it, it can't run modern android at acceptable speeds.
If specs are stabilizing (?), I'd really like to see a return to the replaceable-battery/robust hardware school of phones. :/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/android-nougat-drops-...
[I]t's too bad that the support lifecycle of the most consistently updated Android devices is so much shorter than what Apple achieves with iOS, especially since the hardware should still be more than capable of supporting Nougat.