I look forward to these vendors delivering on their promises, and I look forward to Apple perhaps formalizing a promise with less variability for future products.
Neither of these hopes retroactively invalidates the fact that Apple has had a much better track record of supporting old phone models up to this point. Even if you do split hairs about the level of patching some models got in their later years, they still got full iOS updates for years longer than most Android phones got any patches at all, regardless of severity.
This is not an argument that somehow puts Android on top, at best it adds nuance to just how much better iOS support has been up to this point.
Let's also not forget that if Apple wasn't putting this kind of pressure on Google, they wouldn't have even made the promise to begin with, because it's clear how long they actually care to support products with no outside pressure.
I agree. This is the type of competition I like to see between these two companies. In the end the consumer wins regardless of which one you buy. Google has also promised 10 years of Chromebook support, so they've clearly got the message on the importance of supporting hardware much longer than a lot of people would use them for.
Neither of these hopes retroactively invalidates the fact that Apple has had a much better track record of supporting old phone models up to this point. Even if you do split hairs about the level of patching some models got in their later years, they still got full iOS updates for years longer than most Android phones got any patches at all, regardless of severity.
This is not an argument that somehow puts Android on top, at best it adds nuance to just how much better iOS support has been up to this point.
Let's also not forget that if Apple wasn't putting this kind of pressure on Google, they wouldn't have even made the promise to begin with, because it's clear how long they actually care to support products with no outside pressure.