Media for Why isn't your "old" phone getting an Android update? [telecom]

Why isn't your "old" phone getting an Android update? [telecom]

Why isn't your old phone getting Nougat? There's blame enough to go around ...

Your phone maker, its chipmaker, and Google all share responsibility.

By Andrew Cunningham

Not all of the big Android phone makers have announced their plans for the Nougat update, but if you look at Sony's and Google's and HTC's official lists (as well as the supplemental lists being published by some carriers), you'll notice they all have one big thing in common. None of the phones are more than a year or two old.

And while this is sadly the norm for the Android ecosystem, it looks like this isn't exclusively the fault of lazy phone makers who have little incentive to provide support for anything they've already sold you. Sony, for instance, was working on a Nougat build for 2014's Xperia Z3 and even got it added to the official Nougat developer program midway through, only to be dropped in the last beta build and the final Nougat release.

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***** Moderator's Note *****

I wouldn't be surprised to find a mutual-marketing deal is already in place between cell phone manufacturers and eyeglass makers: having left a generation of children cross-eyed from staring at tiny, low def screens, the makers of "smart" phones can now pass the baton to the eyewear outfits, and concentrate on making a slightly less opaque interface for a newly nearsighted consumer.

Bill Horne Moderator