Qualcomm yesterday unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which became a significant event for flagship Android phones. Now it has become known that these phones will also receive a long software update period.
Smartphones with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor will receive OS updates for eight years, senior vice president and general manager of phones Chris Patrick said during the Snapdragon Summit event. This innovation will simplify the task for manufacturers of Android gadgets who strive to support their products for as long as possible.
That doesn’t mean, however, that all Snapdragon 8 Elite phones will automatically receive seven or eight years of Android updates. Manufacturers will have to adapt Android updates to their interface shells and proprietary software, and not everyone is ready to do this. Many, notably Sony, ZTE and Motorola, offer consumers one major OS update and three years of security updates, although all Qualcomm processors from 2020 support at least four OS versions and four years of security updates.
Mr. Patrick said back in June that Qualcomm wants to make it easier for its partners to update old devices, and the company’s concrete steps in this direction cannot but rejoice. I would like to believe that other mobile chip developers, for example MediaTek, will take similar measures.