The reality is that the Photon and Electron are a part of an older generation and will likely be discontinued (unavailable for purchase) sooner than our 3rd generation of products.
To be very clear, we have no current plans to discontinue either the Photon or Electron. Please do not misconstrue anything in this post to be specific commentary on our near term plans for those products.
That disclaimer aside, here are a couple of good working assumptions to consider:
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If and when we decide to create an end of life plan for the Photon or Electron, we will communicate that plan clearly and ensure that customers using those products have a viable transition path onto newer hardware. It is very likely that we would not give less than one year for customers to make this kind of a transition. To reiterate, we do not have plans for an EOL announcement for either of these products today.
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As a general rule, we are likely to provide a significantly longer guaranteed longevity for our our SoMs (E Series / P Series) than our dev kits (Photon, Electron, etc), and a longer guaranteed longevity for our dev kits than our accessories (like the Arduino Shield or Relay Shield). This is one of the many reasons that we recommend that customers deploying products at scale with Particle use our mass production hardware versus our dev kits.
Indeed, there is conscious intent behind choosing to label our Particle Mesh-ready hardware the “3rd generation” of product in order to encourage migration from older generations of hardware. Correspondingly, it is reasonable to assume that products in the Legacy category are at greater risk of being put on an EOL plan that ones outside of it.