Sujet : Who offers longest support, Android or iOS?
De : thomas.e.elam (at) *nospam* gmail.com (Tom Elam)
Groupes : comp.sys.mac.advocacyDate : 01. Jun 2025, 14:05:03
Autres entêtes
Organisation : A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID : <101hj5v$23mfu$1@dont-email.me>
User-Agent : Mozilla Thunderbird
Contrary to recent somewhat hilarious posts, it's iOS. And not by a small margin.
"Apple’s commitment to supporting older devices goes deeper than you think"
(Focus is on iPhone, but also applies to iPad.)
https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/31/apples-commitment-to-supporting-older-devices/"Apple was previously untouchable in this field. If you wanted a phone that would last long (at least in terms of operating system updates), an iPhone would be the best option. Android manufacturers have recently begun matching Apple’s claims on more recent device launches."
"Starting with the Pixel 8 launch, Google is now promising 7 years of software updates, including security patches and quarterly feature drops."
(Note that this applies to the most recent Pixel phones only. Not Samsung etc. And, 7 years only matches long-time Apple support for all iOS devices.)
"Older Android devices, such as ones launched around the same time as the iPhone XS and XR – still only get the typical 2-4 years of software updates."
(Older Android devices had much more limited support, a factor in my personal shift to iOS.)
"A lot of people don’t talk about this, but even after Apple stops supporting your device with mainline iOS after 7 years or so, security updates keep on coming."
"iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, and iPod touch 7 are all devices that didn’t receive 2022’s iOS 16 release. You know what they did receive though? iOS 15.8.4, released on March 31st of this year. There were also numerous security updates prior to that, but that’s the most recent one."
(That is up to 10 years support. iOS 16 also recently received a similar security update.)
I'm not going to argue Mac versus Windows here. Microsoft's Windows 10 fiasco has dinged their reputation.