Install one of the major ROMs like AOSP or LineageOS. Relying on your vendor for software or purchasing a device that forces you to isn't the best idea these days.
> Relying on your vendor for software or purchasing a device that forces you to isn't the best idea these days.
Relying on the efforts of unpaid volunteers doing their best to hack together binary blobs is also not the best idea...
Not all devices are supported by major ROM distributors, nor is the support guaranteed to be endless or current... (even some devices as major as the Galaxy S6 for example)
Agreed, but unfortunately if the difficulty of maintaining/backporting/forward-porting binary blobs means that nobody will release ROMs for your device (anymore), your point is pretty much irrelevant. ;-)
This is true, however it doesn't make the point irrelevant.
1. Beyond difficulty of porting blobs, you might well also simply get your updates from a custom ROM faster than you'll get them from the manufacturer, even if it's still supported. That in itself is an advantage.
2. Backporting updates to third party components can be simple (assuming a stable ABI/API); the easiest case is probably that of just dropping binaries from a similar phone that did get updated into a zip file and then flashing it. Look at busybox installers, for example; all you need is a version compiled for your hardware. Java components can sometimes be changed as well (see xposed). This works on desktop systems as well, sometimes: I've been able to 'fix' older games into working just by dropping a newer version of a dll into the game directory (directx, openal, etc))
3. Maybe the company is just stupid. Motorola (or is it Verizon?) has tried Marshmallow for the Moto E2 in Europe, but not in the US. I'd expand on this but I'm on mobile and I'm lazy.
