Hi,
the other day I was presented with an upgrade info that I had to reboot my device.
After reboot my phone had upgraded from Android 14 to Android 15.
Android 14 isn't EOL and won't be for some time.
So what I'm asking:
Why is GOS forcing a major upgrade on the user which might or might not break usability or features? Isn't this kind of unusual?
My suggestion would be an Opt-In for major upgrades as long as the previous version is still supported, so users can decide and prepare if stuff isn't working.

There is probably reasoning for fast rolling release upgrades.

Thank you for your work.

BTW: So far I didn't have any problem with the upgrade, so: very good job.

    sir_brickalot thw GOS team always keeps pushing updates mainly for security reasons. Devices that are EOL receive some security updates, as part of legacy support, but newer phones that support newer versions obviously don't. That's the tradeoff between broken features and security.

    Hello!

    By far not everything is backported to older Android releases. You must be on the very latest version to have all security improvements applied, that's why it's so crucial to port our features as quickly as possible. That is painful at times because upstream bugs get in your way too but not much you can do about that, it's necessary.

    Thank you for your quick answer.

    @spring-onion do I understand you correctly, that security improvements != security patches? So the older version could be relatively safe but high value targets should probably instantly upgrade and get a big fat warning or something?

    I still think think it could be beneficial for users to have the option to choose the time of the upgrade on major upgrades and I’m not aware of any major operating system that automatically upgrades from one major version to the next without user input.

    One example that might impact users on upgrade:
    Syncthing for Android development has been discontinued [0]. As far as I understand it because Google won't allow full file system access on newer APIs. So it is possible that I get an auto upgrade from GOS and suddenly Syncthing silently stopped working and all my precious files won't get backed up anymore.
    This is only an example to support my line of thinking.

    @splattergames I'm not advocating for not upgrading at all. Just against auto upgrades on major versions.

    [0] https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing-android/issues/2064#issuecomment-2424797592

      sir_brickalot do I understand you correctly, that security improvements != security patches?

      Oh, no I used that synonymously.

      sir_brickalot So the older version could be relatively safe but high value targets should probably instantly upgrade and get a big fat warning or something?

      Important to note is that for pixels, there is only the one update path, and that is to the newest Android version. There is no sort of sidegrading here, you don't get these inferior backports. And we are obviously not interested in doing that for devices that are perfectly in support. So you would be immediately running an unsupported, end-of-life release. It won't kill you if you were to update 2 days later, but the only path is straight ahead. It's why Google has gone over to officially advertise that their now 7 years of support also include all Android releases; less work involved by not dealing with ugly backports and legacy branches. The pixel 6 and 7 line-up is very likely to get the same treatment for the same reason.

      sir_brickalot I still think think it could be beneficial for users to have the option to choose the time of the upgrade on major upgrades

      You can disable the updater if you wish, security wise the earlier you update the better. It is a delicate procedure, but we don't just throw it at you and have you deal with any major fallouts, this time around we had many consecutive releases to iron out the biggest flaws.

      sir_brickalot I’m not aware of any major operating system that automatically upgrades from one major version to the next without user input.

      Well, here we are.

      sir_brickalot Syncthing for Android development has been discontinued

      Holding onto it won't turn back the time, better find a replacement sooner than later.

      Thanks for taking the time to explain the projects goal and perspective.
      I'll try to manage. ;)