Comment by wronglebowski 14 hours ago
Everyone is missing the why here, this only happens because the whole stack is vertically integrated. Even if say LG wanted to make a box like this and update it for 10 years they couldn’t, they don’t make the chips. Qualcomm straight up refuses to support chips through this many Android releases. Even if device manufacturers want to support devices forever it won’t matter if the actual SoC platform drops support.
> Even if device manufacturers want to support devices forever it won’t matter if the actual SoC platform drops support.
Yeah, so that's not a why, that's a how (and it's not necessary or sufficient anymore, see the Samsung and Pixel reference).
The why seems very much what the article covers.
While the vertical integration is definitely the best way to get it done, it's not strictly required as long as there is good enough documentation for a platform. Linux originally supported Intel without any Intel engineers even knowing it existed.
Also consider Apple's chips, which have gotten Linux support without Apple ever submitting a single line of code.
While Qualcomm's behaviour is definitely a massive bummer (not to mention Qualcomm's competitors), it doesn't stop manufacturers from supporting their devices. It merely stops maintaining support from being cheap and easy.
Yet Microsoft figured this out decades ago.
I (well my mom) had a supported with security updates version of Windows 7 on my 2007 Mac Mini (not a typo) until 2023.