Google has been promising to 'solve' fragmentation and long-term support for almost a decade, and it doesn't seem like there is any real solution.
If you interested in long-term updates, the answer is simple: buy an iPhone.
If you interested in long-term updates, the answer is simple: buy an iPhone.
Android Pie: https://www.androidauthority.com/project-treble-2019-1045370... Android 11: https://9to5google.com/2020/12/16/android-updates-4-years/
I would, if apple wouldn't dictate what i can and cannot install on my phone.
Is there a smartphone that's usable as a daily driver, lets me have root and provides long term updates?
A touchscreen notebook with a GSM/LTE modem and a decent microphone running Linux is the closest you can get today as far as I know
while there are android phones that are supported by custom rom's up to ~5 years (exceptions even longer), the majority isn't.
meanwhile a 5year old iphone se is seamlessly supported by the manufacturer and probably will be for a few years to come.
Basically their moving away from the copyleft Linux kernel.
Given Google's awful track record with Android and security updates, and their lack of ability to force companies like Qualcomm to provide longer support windows, I'm not sure their new strategy will be successful.
Inevitably they'll be severe vulnerabilities found in the drivers including eg, Cellular radio / baseband drivers, Bluetooth driver, Wifi driver, and the vulnerabilities will never get patched.
Hopefully Google's capability-based microkernel approach with Zircon will stop this ever happening. But again, given Google's atrocious track record with Android and security I highly doubt it.
Even Windows doesn't support eg, i586 and i686 CPU architectures yet the Linux kernel does, so it seems like copyleft drivers are the only way to get security updates decades later.
Just a correction, I meant "Hopefully Google's capability-based microkernel approach with Zircon will reduce the incidence and severity of vulnerabilities being exploited once they are inevitably discovered".
This isn't a technical problem, it is an economic (and social and legal) problem.
But yes, it's an economic problem because that's pretty expensive (but has been achieved before eg, nouveau driver)
Google could easily use their monopolistic position to force all SoC vendors to provide greater software support.
Heck, Google could even simply pay every SoC vendors to open source their drivers. It's unlikely to even cost that much.
But today's Google is simply too incompetent to ever fix Android's security update problem. They've been making silly excuses for decades.