Re: Ever increasing hardware demands
I think we may be back to hardware support for specific features. Remember in the early days of Android when point releases wouldn't necessarily work on older hardware? This was apparently (I'm not a dev) down to missing features in the SoC's.
I'm guessing the lack of support has less to do with oomph – most phones have had multiple cores and enough RAM for several years now – and more to do with things like hardware encryption. There is also the possibility of the new features requiring particular GPU functions that older chips don't have, which is similar for some games. This is speculation on my behalf, have to read the AOSP release notes for full details.
I think the important thing is that security patches are backported ASAP and this is as much down to the manufacturers as it is to Google. CM13, which runs great on my Samsung S5, recently had a big update chock full of them. As consumers we need to put pressure on manufacturers to do their job properly: cut out the crapware and provide regular and timely security updates. I suspect many would be happy to pay a nominal annual fee for these after the end of the statutory warranty period has passed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
