For context, Android Eclair 2.1 was released 7.5 years ago. Android Froyo 2.2, which succeeded it, was released 7 years ago and is still supported by the Google Play Store.
The problem is that support for hardware ends far too soon. We're about to hit a transistor size wall; it doesn't make sense to spend $500 on a phone that is functionally equivalent to your old one just to get a software update.
Why can you run a cutting edge commercial OS on a 12 year old PC but not a 2 year old phone?
You wouldn't buy a $500 washing machine, microwave, or oven that only lasted 2 years, but you're expected to do so for a phone?
> Why can you run a cutting edge commercial OS on a 12 year old PC but not a 2 year old phone?
Because Windows isn't open source.
That is absolutely the answer. Because hardware manufacturers couldn't just take Windows and recompile the kernel for their own custom hardware they had to support the IBMPC standard bios interfaces and ACPI.
With Android, when hardware manufacturers can get away with not standardizing the hardware platform to be OS generic, they make custom shit blobs they stick in a Linux kernel and leave for dead after 2 years.
Because it sells new devices. If you could keep an old S3 updated to the latest Android effortlessly there would be no artificial software based pressure to buy a new phone as long as you still liked the old one.
I actually find it really fascinating that it seems that hardware vendors are aggressively trying to create new modes of planned obsolescence as Google ramps up efforts to reduce their ability to abandon updates. User irreplaceable batteries are the biggest one to me, where vendors take the extra step to be truly devious and make hard-to-access batteries in sealed phones actually impossible to replace because they either solder the battery in or make it break the connectors when you try to remove it.
I agree, Android is particularly bad for this as well. I work with someone still using an iPhone 4 - works fine for him in that he can make and receive calls on it which is all he uses it for, but thanks to shoddy update support I can still send specific characters to him in an SMS and make his phone restart!
