Over 2 years since we first reported that the German government was pushing to have smartphone makers support their devices for 7 years, it appears that the stars are finally aligning.
At its Unpacked event where it unveiled its latest flagship smartphone series for the year, the Galaxy S24, Samsung also revealed something interesting: a very long software support window for the new smartphones.
Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, which comprises the standard Galaxy S24, the Galaxy S24+ and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, will be the first batch of smartphones from the Korean device maker earmarked to receive software updates for a whopping seven years!
The exact wording is “7 generations of OS (operating system) upgrades” which should loosely translate to the three devices, and any other that Samsung announces this year that may get the same treatment, being supported through 2031. Given that the Galaxy S24 series arrives running Android 14 with One UI 6.1 on top, that should mean that their users can be sure to have Android 21 running on them, should they keep them for that long.
Given usage trends where these pricey flagship smartphones tend to linger around longer as the first owners dispose of them to others in the second-hand market, this should allow for the devices to retain their value for much longer as second, third, fourth and more users are still guaranteed some level of “newness” at least as far as the software experience goes.
It is understood that the aforementioned “upgrades” over the seven years will also include regular security updates as well in addition to the annual bump up to the latest version of Android.
While a seven-year software update cycle sounds ambitious, it is not the first time we have heard of it. Last year, Google announced that its latest Pixel smartphones, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, would be getting 7 years of software updates. Apple, Samsung’s main competitor over the years that just recently dethroned it from the top spot for the first time in over a decade, is famous for supporting its older iPhones for about a similar timeline. The longest Apple has supported an iPhone, as far as we could track, is 6 years.
Will this move by Samsung, the largest Android device maker by shipment and actual sales numbers, lead to more device makers supporting their devices for long? Will we see Samsung cascade the same privilege to devices in other tiers? For instance, we have seen its existing “4 years of operating system upgrades and 5 years of security updates” commitment that first started on the company’s most premium smartphones trickle down to some of its budget smartphones.
