Does this change anything?

[Casualballer]

Samsung announced that they will still keep the s10 lineup on sale for reduced pricing similar to what Apple does with iPhones. This is possible for Apple because of the many years of support Apple gives to its phones. Does Samsung adopting a similar strategy indicate that they will be supporting the devices for longer then in years past? We have seen it possible for phones to get more then 2 years Android updates (pixel essential oneplus etc) so the absolute specced out monsters that are Samsung phones could certainly support it.

 

[Rukbat]

The situations are different. The Apple hardware interface doesn't change much year after year, so they have one version of iOS, and it either runs on all iPhones or it doesn't. (12 won't run on an iPhone 3 - the phone doesn't have the size or the power.) Android phone hardware interfaces change every model, every year, for every manufacturer, so Samsung would have to adapt the hardware application layer to with with each succeeding version of Android. If they were going to do that, the Note 3 would be running Android 10.

I'm guessing that they'll stick to the "2 year from release for flagships" update schedule.

 

[Adam Frix]

Samsung announced that they will still keep the s10 lineup on sale for reduced pricing similar to what Apple does with iPhones. This is possible for Apple because of the many years of support Apple gives to its phones. Does Samsung adopting a similar strategy indicate that they will be supporting the devices for longer then in years past?

I certainly hope so.

Here's my opinion: this is tacit acknowledgement that Samsung recognizes that we've reached peak phone, and that the S10 family (I would even say S9) is more than adequate for long haul duty.

 

[werkx]

A lot of people got smartphone and if their basic need is met, there isn't much incentive to upgrade so it sucks when they feel they are being forced to do so. Especially the so called flagship devices of the past few years.

 

[Morty2264]

I would hope that it would.

Not everyone can afford to buy premium devices every other year or every two years; so keeping in with customer and product support would be another particularly awesome feather in Samsung's cap.