cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34045100
still deciding to fully degoogle with GOS or muddling through with what I have (proprietary, data grabbing and bloated).
To understand the question, compare with my main hardware with debian on it: a regular notebook I bought in 2016 and I’ve used heavily for all kinds of stuff: working, writing papers, downloading and playing media including AV1, editing audio, torrenting…
One of the best investments I ever made, considering what I paid and how prices nowadays are. Debian offers regular upgrades and I don’t have to check if my hardware is going to support the software on a level comparable with android devices (GOS only runs on pixels, other open-source, privacy focused Android operating systems have similar hardware restrictions).
I want this kind of ROI for the device I buy and the software I use, but I don’t know if that’s possible:
GOS drops support for older pixels but I don’t know how many years any particular device is supported by GOS: 3 years? not enough. There’s no way I’m buying a new pixel every 3 years. I’d even consider 6 years restrictive.
You can probably expect GOS support as long as Google supports the device, that is the main limitation. For the newer Pixels that is promised to be 7 years after release.
Going by this table, Pixel 6 is currently the oldest to get full GOS updates
That matches Google’s software support
Pixel 8A you can get probably very affordable now and will get updates until 2031. It’s more likely that by that time you will have dropped your phone and break it or simply want a hardware upgrade.
It also supports playing AV1 in hardware even at 4k resolution.
That is now in question after Google has decided to close android development.
Android development isn’t closed. The Pixels no longer have public device trees provided by Google, but no other device manufacturer did that either. It was a nice to have, but Graphene still got a fully functional Android 16 build out without them within a few weeks, and the device trees aren’t why they build for Pixels, it’s the security features.
