Deth

Fitness and everything else

Android Devices Not Getting Security Updates

One of my biggest frustrations with android devices is that the manufacture supports the security updates and that just typically doesn’t happen. It’s the culture of technology now. Push it out now then artificially obsolete it. People eat that shit up and so many want to just go buy the latest and greatest. I, on the other hand prefer to keep using something as long as it works well enough for my needs. There was a time in the past when I would have liked to have the latest and greatest shiny new thing but I haven’t been that way in a long while. Mostly because I’ve become cheaper and tech stuff has more less stagnated. There’s rarely a killer new feature anymore.

I bought my galaxy note 5 used and I was well aware of the fact that it was “old” and wouldn’t get security updates. I tolerated it because it’s just what’s out there with android that had a large screen and seemed to make sense for me. When I bought that in 2016 I didn’t seem to be able to find anything else that fit my needs as well.

My Samsung tablet on the other hand was bought brand new. It was top of the line at that time and updates were promised but they just never happened. Eventually I found a way to install an open source version of android on. Actually I tried several. In many ways that was a great improvement over Samsung’s very bloated and slow version of android along with their dozens of uninstallable apps that I will never use.

In the time I’ve had that tablet android has had many security updates yet my expensive top of the line tablet never saw any. If they can’t be bothered to reasonably provide security updates they’re options get pushed towards the bottom of my list of choices when it’s time to upgrade.

Really they should have to provide timely security updates for phones particularly. Think about it, it’s a device that has all your information available and is always connected to a network. Either they should have to provide updates for several years or they should have to unlock it so you can have the possibility of keeping your device up to date through other means like I did with my tablet. I don’t expect feature update, hell sometimes due to older hardware features on more current devices may not even be a reasonable possibility.

The whole not providing security updates fiasco is probably the biggest reason I’m looking into the possibility of getting a pixel phone. Google seems to have a history of providing updates and they promise to keep the pixel 2s updated for several years. Hell It even has a two year warranty due to some early problems with them.