While it’s obviously sad to see devices lose support, Android 5, 6, and 7 came out ±10 years ago. If you’ve been running those Android versions on a device as your primary driver for this long, you’ve already missed out on a decade’s worth of software and security updates.
At this point in time, assuming your battery hasn’t given out and still lasts <2 hours (trust me, I have an iPhone SE 2016 I’d love to use as an MP3 player, but I’d need to replace the battery first to get any meaningful usage out of it), if you still don’t want to/can’t upgrade your device to a new phone…
…It might be (long past) time to upgrade to a new OS such as LineageOS. Even if your device can’t reach the latest Android 15 or 16, newer “custom operating systems” can oftentimes be even better than the original. This is speaking from a Pixel 2 XL owner who recently upgraded it from the long-discontinued Android 11 to the newest Android 15, now getting significantly better battery life and performance on top of a beautiful near stock experience.
Makes sense. It sucks for those who cannot afford newer phones or cannot install an alternative image. But if security is the issue at all, then using such old and unsupported Android shouldn’t be used at all. Is anyone actually angry at dropping support for old Android versions. Especially as old as Lollipop, for which its support dropped 7 years ago.
Phones don’t develop security bugs over time. The bugs were there from the beginning. They just often take years to become known. So you have to assume new phones are insecure (just in unknown ways) as much as the old ones were. Maybe even worse.
I still have Android 7 and 8 phones that I use a little, plus an Android 2.3 music player. What crap the hardware compatibility story turned out to be compared with x86 PC hardware.
I really do not agree with you here.
Phones don’t develop security bugs over time.
So what you are saying that no new security bugs will be introduced over the lifetime of the operating system and its integrated software? Software gets updated and they will introduce new security issues over time.
The bugs were there from the beginning. They just often take years to become known.
Doesn’t this apply for every software?
So you have to assume new phones are insecure (just in unknown ways) as much as the old ones were. Maybe even worse.
No, because the old bugs are (hopefully) eliminated. New security mechanisms are integrated, that should help preventing from issues. So the assumption should be that the newer operating system, with the newer installed software is more secure. That should be the assumption at least, especially because the old phones don’t get security updates anymore.
Remember unsupported software is the most unsecure software, especially when we talk about operating systems with unpatched vulnerabilities. Just because you don’t know about an existing vulnerability (because development and fixing for it has stopped), does not mean that hackers will stop hacking it.
Software gets updated and they will introduce new security issues over time.
well the software of those phones certainly did not get updated, so no, no new security bugs are introduced for them
I meant over the lifetime after its first launch, they will updated. You said all bugs are there since day one, which is not true, because software gets updated until end of life. And then unknown bugs at that time are not patched and new vulnerabilities are discovered after they stop getting patches. Why am I even explaining this? Its really basic.
But I see you think that old operating systems (which is extremely rich and complicated and error prone) which do no longer get patches and are used by millions, are perfect software and nobody will try to hack them…
You said all bugs are there since day one,
I’m a different person
I meant over the lifetime after its first launch, they will updated.
that’s right, but after the phone does not get any more updates, it does not get more features either and so the number of bugs does not change anymore. the bugs exploitable in my 6 years old phone were exploitable much earlier.
But I see you think that old operating systems (which is extremely rich and complicated and error prone) which do no longer get patches and are used by millions, are perfect software and nobody will try to hack them…
I do not. the bugs are there, but when the maintenance stops there are no new bugs anymore, they were there for a while
Sure, no new bugs will be programmed into it after support has stopped, but that was not the original discussion about. But that does not mean the software is perfect, especially not a complex operating system that also allows to visit the web and install new applications. There are countless unknown (and known) security issues waiting to be exploited. A 5 year or unsupported older operating system is a time bomb.
The original discussion was “its okay to use unsupported old Android, because all unpatched bugs after its support are there since day one”. And that new (supported) phones and operating systems are less secure because of that. That was the argumentation I am going against.
If you had an old device like that, could you still surf the web half-ways safely with another browser on those platforms?
As far as I know, currently there is no supported browser.
No Chrome, No Firefox.
What a pain, browsers are supposed to be basic computer tools but they’re so bloated now that they can’t be maintained on older hardware. There was once a Wintel upgrade treadmill but now it’s a Webdroid treadmill or something like that. Amounts to the same.
