Google and Qualcomm are bringing 4 years of OS and security updates for Android smartphones

A big selling factor of iPhones compared to Android devices is Apple’s excellent software support, where 4 year old devices receive the newest version of iOS. A separate question is how different that version is or in other words, how much slimmed down it is. In the Android world, Nokia Mobile is relatively successfully supporting all devices with 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security updates and is one of the rare examples of a company supporting their entire portfolio.

Google announced that it partnered with Qualcomm to simplify the whole flow of supporting platforms with multiple OS updates, which should result in faster deploys of updates and less maintenance cost for Qualcomm. For customers, the end result will be 3 Android OS updates and 4 years of Android security updates.

The technical details are explained in this blog post, while the first Qualcomm SoC that will support the new updates flow will be the flagship Snapdragon 888. Besides Google and Qualcomm, Samsung also recently announced that its flagship Note 20 series of devices will get three Android OS updates. A reason for software support getting more and more popular is that customers tend to use their phones for a longer period of time. Basically, most people won’t change their devices until the old one breaks.

Nokia Mobile is known for supporting even the budget phones with updates, but with competitors expanding the software support for higher end phones to 3 to 4 years, the question is will Nokia Mobile do the same?