Android’s Monolithic and Bloated Upgrades vs Purism’s Rolling Upgrades
Fundamentally, all our Purism devices running PureOS receive regular updates to apps and the core OS the same way. Each component of PureOS can be upgraded individually at any time. In contrast, Android has a read-only root filesystem for day-to-day use. As a consequence, Android phones only see a few upgrades and a limited number of security patches. This makes app upgrades the only upgrade Android users get regularly for more than a few years.
On average, PureOS upgrades are a weekly, if not daily, matter. Each time you upgrade, it takes a few minutes to complete. On Android, upgrades are massive and not component-specific. Meaning they take longer to install and are less frequent. Android phone makers only provide these monolithic upgrades and security patches for a few years on average.