The Nvidia shield vs other 1st party SoC devices running Android (e.g. from S devices with Samsung SoCs or Pixels with Google SoCs) goes to show the short lifespan of Android phone updates really has nothing to do with the underlying hardware or OS.
Also the type of updates guaranteed for 10 years on ChromeOS are not the feature update type that require upgrading the actual OS, just security and bugfix patches.
The Shield TV has had an impressive support lifecycle for an Android device but it still falls well short of a 10 year support cycle.
The Shield was released in May 2015 and its latest software update has an Android security patch level of April 2022 and was released November 2022. No more updates seem to be forthcoming. Notably, all Shield TVs today are vulnerable to remote code execution when displaying a malicious WebP image [0], a widespread issue uncovered last year.
Apple released the Apple TV HD two months after the Shield TV, but it still receives the latest tvOS updates to this day and will be receiving this year's new tvOS 18 [1] [2]. It received a fix for that WebP issue the same day as supported Macs, iPhones and iPads did last September.
Even the best Android device examples with good vendor support still seem to be falling short. The Shield TV is still capable streaming hardware in 2024 used by many people, but it's sitting there doing that while missing important security patches unbeknownst to the users.
[2]: To be fair it's the only Apple A8 device that receives support until today. The iPhone 6 with the same chip was launched mid 2014 and received its last update in early 2023.
ChromeOS updates are actual feature updates - for the 10 years of support, your device will be tip-of-tree and have all the features (except a few which are flagged-off, usually for business or performance reasons)
Yeah, you're right. I got a little separated from the comment chain here after writing about the Nvidia Shield and what it implies about phone lifecycles by conflating that story with talking to ChromeOS. While the Shield received major kernel version updates as recently as 2 years ago, going back to the actual comment discussion around the abstracted ChromeOS userspace vs firmware/kernel/driver layer ChromeOS does already drive feature updates of the upper segment of the OS for the full lifecycle without requiring the kernel updates seen in the Shield example. Good catch and thanks for the correction.
Also the type of updates guaranteed for 10 years on ChromeOS are not the feature update type that require upgrading the actual OS, just security and bugfix patches.