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Comment by bradfa | Hacker News Reader

Google has generally supported Chromebooks for about 6 years and just recently seem to have started extending that duration to about 8 years. Some recent Chromebook launches have support through 2029.

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

If Google can do this for Chromebooks, most of which aren't even designed by Google (although usually based off reference designs), clearly they can also do this for the actual phones they make and sell under the Pixel brand. And Chromebooks span quite a wide variety of hardware capabilities, from school-targeted low cost models with eMMC and <4GB RAM all the way up to devices with NVMe and gobs of RAM on cutting edge CPUs from a variety of manufacturers, both ARM and x86.

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Chrome OS is proprietary (Chromium OS is not) and it also cannot be modified by any manufacturer. Every chromebook manufactured also is developed with Google being aware so that the chipset and underlying hardware can be supported. It's quite a different licensing model than Android and that's most likely why giving eight years of updates was much easier.

Sure, but Google has all the source code and all the design files for their Pixel phones. I'm not saying Google needs to support ALL Android devices, just Pixel devices. It is definitely possible for them to support Pixel phones for more than 5 years if they wanted to. It's just an economics question of if it's worth it to Google to do so and clearly it hasn't been.

Even 5 year support for Pixel phones is new with the Pixel 6 line. Previously it had been 3 years max.

But they really don't have all the sources. Up until Pixel 6, they've all used Qualcomm chipsets.

Qualcomm is such a ridiculously horrible company to deal with. They're in the business of selling new SoC designs every 6 months and trying to support a device for more than a few years is considered a massive opportunity cost for them.

It's the same concept as Apple mulching old MacBooks so they don't enter the used market except killing them by lack of software support instead.

They have an absolute stranglehold over the SoC market in the US. Samsung made a stupid deal back in the 90's to license CDMA patents in exchange for not selling SoCs (eventually Exynos) in the US or to any other manufacturer for that matter. At the time it probably made sense because Qualcomm agreed to use Samsung to manufacture their chips, but the deal is so hilarious lopsided these days. 30 years on and Qualcomm still won't renegotiate. It might've drawn regulatory ire if Samsung wasn't a foreign company.

Wow I've never heard the deal. Is there any sources? Pixel chips (delivered from Exynos) not included?

A couple of links:

https://wccftech.com/qualcomm-prevented-samsung-selling-exyn...

https://www.androidcentral.com/qualcomm-licensing-blocked-sa...

For some reason this doesn't apply to snapdragon Chromebooks.

Something tells me there's something wrong, either with Android or with Google itself.

I imagine there's a major attitude difference in the support model for SoCs made for Chromebooks and laptops compared to the ones for smartphones. Smartphones on average are kept for barely over two years in the US, whereas people hang onto a laptop for nearly 5 years.

People are used to desktops and laptops chugging along until they get tired of them being slow, rather than their device or OS vendor cutting them off.

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