An alleged leak of the spec table of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, Google’s upcoming smartphones, shows that the phone could receive seven years of support. The company’s new update policy would give four more Android “life” to the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, since current models only receive three operating system updates.
If the information is confirmed on October 4 (next Wednesday), when Google will hold its event with news about the Pixel line, the search engine company will have the Android smartphone with greater support for operating system update, although the interpretation of the leak is wrong – calm, I will explain.
In the leaked document, the text about the support reads as follows: “Seven years of operating system update, security and Feature Drops (Google’s term for monthly updates with improvements for mobile).” The phrase undeniably leaves room for doubt and we can interpret that all three of these features will have seven years of support – but the Android update can be “only” five years.
Currently, Google delivers five years of updates to the Pixels, being three years of Android and two more of security updates. If the specification announced in the leak is real and follows this “formula” (two years more support for security updates than that of the operating system), it will be five years Android. That’s a year longer than Samsung offers at the moment — and it’s already pretty good.
Seven years of operating system upgrade looks pretty good, but it may not turn out as expected. The iPhone 6s (smartphone I’ve had) featured six OS updates, stopping at iOS 15 in 2021. It was nice to gain some focus features, but others from iOS didn’t arrive.
The problem is that the hardware follows the same as the launch, then seven years of Android updates can sound much more like marketing. After all, various resources can be limited by outdated equipment.
In the end, just the possibility of five years of updates would already be great news for the Pixel – and a point of advantage for Google to compete with Samsung.
