This device is going to get at best around 2 years of proper security updates due to using an SoC launched in late 2020 with 3 years of support. They're claiming they'll be providing something they won't really be providing without doing the work for it.
Conversation
Replying to
On what basis do you claim that they need vendor support for the SoC to provide support for the phone using it?
2
3
I'm sure Google themselves had this problem with one of the Nexus phones. They had to can support for it in under 2 years because one of the chip suppliers didn't release new drivers. If Google can't do it without controlling the hardware, how can anyone?
1
Texas Instruments killed smartphone OMAP about a year after the launch of the Galaxy Nexus. Galaxy Nexus likely used their SoC as an attempt to create more competition in the SoC market. Google tried and failed to do the same thing with Tegra in tablets.
1
1
NVIDIA didn't drop support for their products early when they left the smartphone and tablet markets though. They pivoted to consoles and kept providing support for the existing products. TI approach was really messed up. They gave up, did a mass layoff + screwed their customers.
1
2
Google ended up having to invest in making their own SoC because they got backed into a corner by the failures of these other companies.
Qualcomm could easily be making much higher end CPUs and providing much longer support for their SoC if they thought it'd be profitable...
2
Looking at the way they've treated their Wear platform, I think it's clear which route they've taken.
I'm not surprised Apple, Google and Microsoft are cutting out the middleman.
1
They do the bare minimum to capture most of the market share above incredibly low end devices without much of a profit margin. They don't seem to see Apple as competition despite many people buying iPhones instead of phones using their chips based on LTS and CPU performance.
1
They could provide 6-8 years of support by porting the SoC platform to a newer Linux kernel LTS kernel halfway through the lifetime. I doubt they even need more than a few dozen employees to provide substantially longer support properly. They just don't think it'd bring in money.