Problem with iPhone is when Apple decides to pull the plug with iOS support. Android devices suffer from the same problem with their vendor, but then you can flash it with e.g. LineageOS (+ microG if you wanna avoid Google) or postmarketOS.
True; although Apple keeps supporting their old phones for quite awhile. iOS 11 still supports the iPhone 5S, which came out in September 2013. Only 6% of ios devices use an ios 9 or earlier[1].
4.5 years is pretty good in this market - last I checked you were lucky to get 2 years of software updates from most android vendors. According to usage stats about half of all android phones are stuck on an operating system from 2014 or earlier[1]. I don't want to think about the security consequences of most android phones never having security updates installed.
4.5 years still is nothing on postmarketOS's 10 year target. Bravo.
Yes, my mother has that phone (I recommended it) not only does it still get updates it also has a small form factor with the latest one in that family being the iPhone SE. Downside is its expensive to get a battery replacement, and you're probably due after 4,5 years.
Just because phones run an old Android version, doesn't mean no patches get backported. For example, the official firmware for FP2 runs Android 6 with a patchlevel of (last time I checked) Dec 5.
Furthermore, other "postmarket OSes" such as LOS already extend life. The problem with these is firmware updates for chips, and hardware bugs.
> Just because phones run an old Android version, doesn't mean no patches get backported.
It’s a bit of a separate problem but I’ve seen an awful lot of ignored software update notifications on the phones of relatives over the Christmas break. Is there data on the install rate of security hotfixes?
