If we go one level up the abstraction, always doesn't mean always either. The universe's life is finite. :)

Unconceivable!

The worst piece is that they usually measure from first day of sale, not last. If you buy this same phone next year, you'll only get a year of updates.

I am mostly moving on from an LG G2 to the new Essential Phone. For the past year I have been running AICP, currently at Android 7.1.x Prior to that I had about a year of Cyanogenmod.

Granted, third party roms are not for the average user but it amazes me how few on HN seem to run them and instead whine about why their 3 or 4 year old phone is no longer getting the latest greatest. People here like to point to Apple/iOS but really, how many of the iPrecious users are still on an iphone 4 or 5? Seems that crowd rolls over every 12 to 18 months so what difference does it make?

Exactly. This point does not get sufficient attention to make it a competitive advantage. And it absolutely should be!

Yup, that grabbed my attention, too (so much so that I find a find-in-page for "2 years"). I had no idea things were that bad.