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Comment by robinduckett | Hacker News Reader

You should include iPod Touch and how apple forces a charge for updates on that device.

This chart is also skewed a bit and should be based on intervals of releases rather than "years since". I don't recall seeing any iOS5 backports to iPhone 2G or 3G.

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No, the original iPhone & 3G don't support iOS 5. But they did support the current version of iOS for 3 years after they were released - far more than any Android phones of the period.

(And, no, they don't charge for iPod Touch updates any more - that was technically an accounting regulation issue that the government changed.)

Though to be honest, for the iPhone 3G, the longer green bar is easily misinterpreted as a positive thing, when for the most part, iOS4 rendered the phone very painful to use. 15-30s wait times for camera shutter, frequent hangs, constant crashes in Maps, being the main pain points with the two that my wife and I owned. If they'd have continued security and minor app updates for iOS3 on the 3G, I'd have been much happier.

The first releases of iOS4 for the 3G were pretty bad but the subsequent releases greatly improved things. I recently sold my old 3GS so I updated it to the latest 4.x version and it was totally usable. Slower than iOS2 but for a 3.5 year old device I thought it was completely acceptable performance. In the rush to release iOS4 I think Apple didn't have time to optimize the 3G release. They seem to have learned their lesson with iOS5 for the 3GS.

There is an enormous difference between a 3G and a 3GS. My wife and I have one of each, both running 4.2.1. Her 3GS is usable, my 3G really isn't. The 3H suffers from lots of OOM-killed applications, and a huge number of 30-40 second pauses that freeze the entire UI. (Although AT&T seems to be equally good at dropping calls placed from either.)

I hear you on the 'Apple didn't have time to get the 3G release right'. That's fine. I have no problem with being stuck on iOS 3.x. Good iOS 4.x would be best... Good iOS 3.x would be almost as good... but bad iOS 4.x is awful. They either should have invested the time to do the release correctly, or just not ship the update to the 3G.

I have my iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1 here. Home screen to camera shutter open takes 3 seconds. I don't use Maps, but nothing I do use crashes.

I don't think Apple charges for iPod touch updates anymore.

After the government changed how things could be accounted for, Apple stopped charging for software updates.

The chart could definitely be made easier to read. I also thought it claimed that the original iPhone got iOS 5 since current = 5 right now. Instead, the chart says that after three years, the original iPhone was still running the latest version at that time (iOS 3)

"Years since" is the right metric, because mobile phone contract lengths are measured in years, not in some ad-hoc multiples of the times between releases of the OS.

I own a one year old Galaxy S, and lately I have been holding my breath hoping Ice Cream Sandwich will be released for my terminal, whether by Samsung or by Cyanogen.

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