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.

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    GrapheneOS supports a phone model for as long as Google officially does. You can see the support lifetime of each model here: https://endoflife.date/pixel

    If you want to keep an updated phone constantly, you’d have to upgrade every 7 years.

    • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month ago

      Just an FYI for those who think like this. I DID TOO.

      Your cellular chip and network carrier will often phase out your frequency bands 2 to 3 years before the 7 year mark. Thus your service (internet/data) will not work long before your device loses updates. You will get fed up with your device and buy another pixel roughly every 3 generations to keep with reliable internet connectivity.

      • who@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Nope. 8 years after release, mine still has network service and still works well.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        There’s nothing in that link to indicate 15 years. OEM support means Google’s support, not graphene’s. GrapheneOS does usually offer a few harm reduction releases beyond the official support timeline, but that’s a few months of extra time, not years.