zlacker

That’s specifically covered under new EU ewaste laws - upgrades the impair device performance must be fixed in a reasonable timeframe.

>>daniel+(OP)
Does that cover e.g. flash degradation over time from just normal write cycles?

>>dmoy+o9
No, but given how stark the slowdown often is after an os update… I don’t think that’s what has happened

>>daniel+Kw
An OS update does a lot of writes though. Its downloading a several gig file, unpacking lots of tiny files, shuffling them all around etc. Its probably one of the most disk intensive things a phone will do.

And in fact installing the first big OS update was one of the key points on the Nexus 7 that showcased its incredibly fragile storage. So we've definitely seen this happen in the past specifically with OS updates being the straw that killed the camel's back in flash storage performance.

I've experienced it on devices before as well. Play around flashing different ROMs on Android, eventually each flash keeps getting a little slower and a little slower, and suddenly just copying files directly off USB gets incredibly slow and the device becomes nearly unusable. I've seen it happen on a few different devices.