End of Android OS Support for S21 series

[BS707]

I’ve been a loyal Samsung customer for years, with multiple Samsung products including appliances, monitors, and TVs. I own a Galaxy S21 Ultra and am extremely disappointed that major Android updates will stop at Android 15.

The phone is still fully capable, and ending updates this early feels arbitrary, especially when newer Samsung devices get longer support. This decision makes me seriously rethink buying future Samsung products. Long-term software support is a major factor in customer trust and brand loyalty — please reconsider extending OS updates for the S21 series.

[nullandvoid]

Are you an engineer?  Who are you to say what the phone is fully capable of?  Whether a consumer pays attention to the update cycle when they purchase a device is totally on them.  You purchased a device with a different update schedule than newer models.  Once upon a time, phones (of all brands) only got 2 years of updates and everyone either kept using their old devices till they died or upgraded every two years.  Then companies went to a 3 year update cycle.  When Samsung went to 5 and then 7 years of updates, they became the industry leaders in how many update cycles their devices get.  Whatever gave you the impression that ANY company for ANY product offered support for a lifetime? Name even one.  Even if there was a lifetime guarantee on ANYTHING, it only means for the lifetime of the product, not *your* lifetime.  All electrical and electronic products have a "useful life" cycle.  That period of time is determined by the manufacturer (and physics).  As was said multiple times in this thread, your phone will not stop working simply because it no longer gets updates, it will still work (until it doesn't).  It will be useful to you until such time as the developers of the apps you use decide that they will only update to work on newer operating systems.

[RedOregon]

Have some cheese.

[Oxford]

There are some threads on here worth having a second beer while you're reading lol!

[Members_1GReZhz]

Love how its the suck up 'Honored Contributors' bro's defending the practice of planned obsolescence.  This is a ridiculous practice, 99.9999% of people aren't going to look up or consider 'update schedules', nor should they. That you think they are somehow obligated to is frankly ignorant and disconnected.

As you noted, consumers do research their $1000+ device, but something like an "update schedule" is not an item they should need to consider.  $1000+ devices should not be grave yarded 4, 5, 6 years after I purchase them because the billion dollar tech company "met their obligation" in your view. Their obligation is to provide the consumer with a working product which they aren't intentionally neglecting into disrepair, period. 

Its sad people are actually defending this. 

[nullandvoid]

I beg to differ, when researching a $1,000+ device, one should absolutely consider how many updates a device is going to get.   It will help determine the "useful life" of the device and "cost per year" calculation.  I think you are the one disconnected from reality here.

Planned obsolescence has been a thing in electronics and appliances since the 1950s - don't act as if Samsung has decided on something new. You are obviously too young to remember when smart phones first came into existence and the update cycle was only two years. The reason for that was carriers.  Carriers required a 2 year commitment, for which they gave you a "free" device.  In exchange for signing another 2 year contract, you got a new phone.  Many carriers still do that as a retention measure, now that it's so easy to switch carriers. People actually didn't care about that so much, as long as their phone worked.  While some people traded their phone up every two years (carriers made it very easy when they were giving the phones away), 99.9999% of users did not. It wasn't until around Android 5 or 6 when Android started adding a lot of nifty features (manufacturers also started making better hardware with advanced features to take advantage of what newer Android versions offered), that people decided they needed to have the latest and greatest Android version - an still many people don't care as long as they have a device that works.  The cycle was *still* two years.  When Samsung started increasing the update cycle with new models (I believe it was with the S20 series), they became the industry leader in how many updates devices would get.  They were, and are not, obligated to grandfather older devices into that policy.  

Your phone does not become obsolete just because updates stop.  It will still be perfectly usable until app developers decide they no longer want to update their apps for older operating systems and banking apps decide that older OS versions are not secure enough for their apps.  You will get another 3-5 years of useful life out of your device after updates stop.  After OS/security updates stop, you should download an anti-malware app and keep it running to make up for the security shortfalls that *may* occur in un-updated devices.

The "honored contributor" (or any other) designation on here means absolutely nothing other than the longevity of the user on the forum and how many posts/comments, likes and solutions they have garnered.  

[Mujibar]

I'd love to hear how you plan to convince multi-billion dollar companies to change their update policies.

[Robin621k]

The ignorance of this comment is mind blowing, they obviously don't know that it is also up to the manufacturer of some of the components in a device to also update drivers to make sure that those components continue to work. Just to name a few, Qualcomm, SoC, modem, Wifi+ Bluetooth.

[Mujibar]

Always a cascade effect when any policy changes are made.

[nullandvoid]

Oh no. Honored Contributor bros to the defense - the horror‼  It's also ignorant to believe that objects do not have a finite life span.

[Robin621k]

Exactly!