I have a few Android phones, but my favorite is the Xiaomi Mi A1. It’s a five‑year‑old phone, but it runs the latest Android thanks to LineageOS. This phone stopped getting official updates years ago, and without LineageOS it wouldn’t be usable, even though the hardware is perfectly capable. It’s still blazing fast, which is a good reminder that two‑year (or even five‑year) software‑support cycles are indefensible. We should be able to use our hardware as long as it works, which can easily be close to ten years or more.
I’m not a fan of heavy‑handed regulation, so I get why companies don’t want to support devices for more than a few years. Forcing them to offer software support for 10+ years is problematic for many reasons, one being that companies come and go, which makes such rules unenforceable.
On the other hand, it’s not hard to let customers install non‑official firmware. We could even let companies off the hook if they simply release open‑source drivers for their hardware, enabling others to keep offering software support long after the manufacturer has moved on.