Updates? Removable battery? Rootable?
I know this isn't trendy due to the fact most people are on a contract and throw away their phones every two years, but in a sane world (one where people treated a laptop in their pocket exactly the same as a mobile phone) there would be riots if it was supported for less than five years.
As it is the best that's possible with Android at the moment is three years for Android Enterprise phones (of which the latest Blackberry KeyTwo is one).
Start punishing suppliers, and chipset creators. Say a new fancy graphics chipset comes out, and they want to extol its virtues :
'so, how open are the specifications?' 'We supply a binary blob certified to work with Android Oreo'
*sucks teeth, immediately lowers score out of ten by four points*
'How long will you be supporting this chipset for?' 'Well, as we said we'll be supporting Oreo throughout its lifetime and then will make a decision on further releases'
'Sorry, our review policy is a blanket support arrangement of a minimum five years including all Android versions released in that time. Come back when you've tried harder'
Phones are now mostly a stable market with very little differentiation. Service should be the key factor here, and the whole infrastructure (Google, chipset manufacturers, headset manufacturers) being geared to force people to change phone on a regular basis is borderline criminal.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
