Vote now: How many years of software updates should smartphone manufacturers provide?

We live in a world where we’ve swapped the Cold War and the nuclear arms race with an electronic one. Every year smartphone manufacturers dish out new models (sometimes twice a year), urging consumers to get the better, faster, smarter version of their phone.

I personally don’t believe that we need this “refreshes” every year - phones are not only powerful enough to keep up (I think with the lack of true multitasking you can get away with much more modest and energy efficient silicon anyway), but also too similar - at least in the past couple of years.

Now, it’s a vicious cycle - as companies grow larger and they strive for that “sustainable growth” they just have to keep up with getting new models out, even though the upgrades are incremental (look at what Samsung and Apple are doing).

It’s not like you can just say - “Look folks, here’s the new Galaxy, it’d be good for the next 5 to 10 years, we’ll maybe get out a new model by then.” It’s a huge debate, especially if you want to throw in the automotive industry model refresh cycle, PC and laptops, and so on. Smartphones have the shortest cycle of them all.

And companies kinda know that their hardware is good enough and could last longer. That’s where software updates come in. This might be just a huge conspiracy theory but I feel like that’s the main reason behind the 2 or 3 years of software updates that most smartphone manufacturers provide.

What do you think? I know Apple does things differently, and kudos to them for allowing people to keep their phones for up to 5 years but the Android market seems to be much more short-term oriented.

So, let’s hear the vox populi! How many years of software updates should smartphone manufacturers provide? Are you satisfied with 2 to 3 years because you’re swapping your phone anyway, or you want a bit more longevity out of your purchase? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.