However, EU regulation introduced in June 2025 requires that all smartphones sold on the European market receive software updates for a long time. The directive does not specify a minimum price for this rule to take effect. The EU explicitly states that software updates must be available for five years after a device is no longer sold.
Motorola’s lawyers have apparently studied that legal text closely, and now the company appears to be ready to confront the EU Commission. Their interpretation is that the EU does not actually require updates to be provided at all, but only requires that if updates are offered, they must be free of charge. However, we are not aware of any case in which a smartphone manufacturer has ever charged money for security patches.
I’ve seen the speculation that Motorola is one of the OEM under consideration by Graphene OS team for future device support. Motorola’s history of policies regarding security updates doesn’t really support that speculation tbf
I ain’t no apple fan, but my old iPhone 8—which is now my sister’s work phone since one year ago—just received a security patch a couple months ago, eight years after it was bought. And yes I went with an iPhone 16, because only two phones in 14-15 years (iPhone 4, 8, and now 16) is something no other brand can currently compete with. Unpopular here, I know, but I don’t care about a jack port (my android work phone has one and its only function is to build up pocket dust), or sideloading (I don’t even ‘sideload’ much in my laptops, almost everything comes from the official repositories).
I really hope the phone landscape changes and, in six years or so, I can buy a proper FOSS phone, but I’m not holding my breath.
iOS is meaningless. We have zero insight into what’s really going on, and it’s not a device that allows any control.
Apple lies and obfuscates as much as any other org does, and is majorly hypocritical about it.
Plus, it’s a lot easier to provide updates when you control all the hardware, and sunset perfectly good hardware by not allowing apps to continue to work.
If I’d drop more than 1k on a phone I’d expect that thing to get updates until the sun explodes.
That iPhone 8 (plus) was like 750. So like a hundred a year. I literally am the person than spends less on phones out of my entire social circle.
Edit: also I’ve had three android (not so) cheap phones—one handed down to me, previous to the iPhone 4, that I had for a few months. And my current and former work phones, provided by my company—and hated (still hating the current one) the hell out of them, utter trash full of ads and uninstallable spyware.
750 eur in 2017 is more than 900 eur in todays money. Like I said, if the phone is 1k or almost that amount, it better have insane support. And while I can’t help with work phones, as those are subject to your company, if you ever need the info for a personal phone: there is nothing you can not deinstall using adb. You can uninstall anything including system apps to the point the phone can’t boot anymore, so don’t go too wild.
Also don’t get me wrong, I hate both apple and google equally. But my cyanogenmod phone had updates from 2012 to 2019 and was 180 eur new. We need vialble linux phones sooner than later.
If the EU fumbles this…
They wont. The EU went up against much larger fish for protecting the consumer rights.
Allowing this would automatically allow Apple and Google to do the same.
