My first “own” smartphone and not second hand from family members was a samsung galaxy s7 I bought in 2016, I kept using it until the battery nearly died (took a whooping… 15 minutes to go from 100% to 0%) in 2022 and I couldn’t simply change it due to the glass back being broken, the screen had severe burn-ins and the OS was no longer maintained so I ended up switching.
That first phone that lasted only 6 years was a valuable lesson, it shaped my wishlist for a “perfect” phone, which ironicaly enough was another samsung one, but xcover rather than S. Hoping that this one with no glass back, an amovible battery, no oled screen and that went from android 12 to 16 (and still going) will last longer.
I wish my old S7 could have any use beside paperweigh but I couldn’t find any sadly.
Did phone manufacturer finally decide to keep supporting their models after the first year/couple of years? Or did the “likely lifetime” of a smartphone dropped below that in the meantime?
If anything, my experience with “manufacturer support” on android isn’t particularly stellar, with the only outlier being my current Samsung XCover, which is kinda cheating due to the thing being a rugged phone targeting companies and not the average joe, so the thing is built to last, both hardware and software side.
On the other hand you do have a couple (maybe even three!) companies that offer linux pre-installed on their machines.