With 1.4 billion active android devices out there that still translates into a whopping 200M or so devices.

Unfortunately, Google has stated no intention to support or secure any device running an OS released more than 18 months ago. There's many dozens of CVEs that involve owning devices pre-5.1 that will never be fixed by Google or the OEMs.

This is interesting. In Australia, there's the Australian Consumer Law, which mandates that products must be of acceptable quality for a duration that aligns with the length of the contracts. Legally a consumer can return such a 'faulty' device to the carrier. I'm guessing that this is something that needs to be bumped up by 6 months in Australia (or more likely the carriers will take a risk that there aren't enough consumers that care about security to follow through with such returns). Perhaps if someone were to post a 'How to get a free phone every 18 months' type of article it could press the point that writing software is not a one shot process, and broken software should be supported for longer periods of time.

Planned obsolescence at the expense of security.

Sounds like something telecoms would like, buying those big expensive phones that keep you on their 2 year contracts (24 months)

I sincerely think this meme should be considered dead.

http://time.com/money/3991578/verizon-2015-mobile-cell-phone...

I work in the mobile. I am experiencing this daily. IF normal consumers gave a shit about patching old phones, THEN we have a legitimate shot at fixing this problem. But carriers are generally transitioning away from treating handsets as a revenue source and focusing more on transport.

So please- think hard about repeating this cheap shot. It's easy and can win you internet points, but I am arguing that now is the best time in history that we could start making progress on this issue. Comments like this do not help move the ball forward.

Thank you for educating me on this matter.

Though from what I've witnessed, even though it is unreasonable, it seems most non-techs expect the carriers to do it automatically for them without their involvement.

That would work, but only if people appreciated the scope of the risk of continued operation of their vulnerable phone.

Does the open source nature of Android help here for a fix?

200M devices sounds like a lot, is it not possible for the community to fix it?

I'm writing this from a Samsung device that never had a supported lollipop release. If I'd be on stock, I'd be vulnerable to many vulnerabilities including stagefright.

But I'm using an open source ROM called cyanogenmod, currently on Android 5.1 (cm 12.1). I upgraded to a newer nightly after patches were made to fix stagefright, and now I'm not vulnerable. I could also have installed a version of cyanogenmod from KitKat that back ported the patch.

So yes, open source can and has addressed this. If your device is supported by cyanogenmod, you can fix it.

Note that marshmallow cm builds are expected to be released soon, and afaik my device (S3) will still be supported: this would make my device upgradable 2 entire major releases after the manufacturer dropped support.

That doesn't work for the common user.

No open source solution can. Even if it was a patch downloaded on top of stock, you can't get people to upgrade if it's not automatic/promoting them.

In fact, there are already Marshmallow nightlies for the S3.

Interesting is that, even though you are running 12.1 on the S3, there was never an official CyanogenMod release for the S3, only unofficial ones. But now a maintainer has stepped up, made MM (CM 13) run on the S3 again and we get our official releases again.

https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=d2spr looks pretty darn official to me.

And I don't see any CM 13 releases yet. I thought they were expected to drop in a few weeks.

Edit: I assume you were talking about the international version. That does seem to have skipped lollipop. I also came across unofficial builds of 13 for my device, but I'm not upgrading until I have debug time.

I've got a Japanese Galaxy S. As far as I know, there are no ROMs with a working modem :-( So either I'm stuck on Gingerbread, or I don't get a working phone. Binary blobs suck.

Learned my lesson. Next phone will be a Nexus so that I can be sure that it isn't abandoned 6 months later. I do admit that it seems strange to have a nearly 5 year old phone and still use it. But it does everything I need it to do so I can't really justify dropping $X00 upgrading to a new phone.

> Next phone will be a Nexus so that I can be sure that it isn't abandoned 6 months later.

I wouldn't bet on it.

Check how well Google supported Nexus users using TI processors.

Asking as a GNex owner: what did you expect Google to do when TI decided to exit the mobile space and could no longer maintain its drivers for newer kernels? I was pissed off, but only at TI.

- Have their own teams develop the required fixes. After all they are developing Android.

- Have had the business sense to make a proper contract with TI that would either oblige them to keep doing the fixes even after product termination or provide the relevant information for Google.

This is how a company ensures its costumers are safe from outsourcing deals.

Right now, Google can let it happen again and people can choose to properly blame Google or the OEM.

You can drop $50 or so and get a galaxy s3, which has decent specs and supports cyanogenmod (although I don't know about international variants).

For all practical purposes no, being open source does not help. Yes, Android is OS, but the device manufacturers and carriers lock down their devices so you do not have the freedom do install changes or make modifications to your own device. They do not accept contributions from the OS community.

I believe this will eventually be true for everything - from servers to desktops to laptops, etc.

Counterpoint: every device that cyanogenmod runs on.

Sure, I install cyanogenmod when I can. Ordinary users cannot do that. Samsung is actively hostile to this and samsung makes some of the most popular android devices.

> Also, here in the US, our largest carrier (Verizon), requires phones to have encrypted bootloaders. So my phone, for instance, cannot be flashed with a third party build.

Nexus 5X and 6P work on Verizon, and have a unlockable bootloader out of the box.

Even a slight security only bump to 24 months would help and match Apple.

In NL the consumers rights organization has sued Samsung to force them to provide updates. Really curious how that will play out.

Still far from "every"