Extended Support Qualcomm and Google team up to offer 8 years of Android updates Starting with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm enables up to eight years of update support. Ryan Whitwam Feb 25, 2025 12:28 pm | 23 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreQualcomm and Google have joined forces to extend software updates on Android devices. With Google's assistance, the chipmaker has committed to providing extended vendor support to any OEM building on its most powerful chips, pushing the theoretical lifespan of Android devices to eight years. There are plenty of caveats, but this move could make your next phone more useful for longer.The extended support window only applies to Android devices with the latest Qualcomm chipsets. To start, the eight-year support timeline will be extended to devices running the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform, which has powered devices like the OnePlus 13 and Galaxy S25. Later this year, the same policy will be applied to the company's new Snapdragon 8 and Snapdragon 7-series chips, and you can expect the same deal for at least the next five generations of Qualcomm silicon."Through this collaboration, OEMs can more seamlessly update the software and security on their devices, ensuring a more secure and long-lasting Android experience for our users," said Google's Android Platform manager Seang Chau.Snapdragon 8 and 7 chips are used in flagship and almost-flagship phones, so don't expect a new Qualcomm-based budget phone to get anywhere near the same update commitment. There's nothing stopping Qualcomm from offering the same deal with cheaper components, but people tend to expect phones that cost more to last longer. A cheap phone might not even make it eight years before something breaks or you get tired of how slow it is, and OEMs aren't incentivized to spend the money supporting cheap hardware.Currently, Samsung and Google lead the market with seven years of guaranteed security patches and OS updates. With Qualcomm's help, other companies could reach similar heights. With Qualcomm's support, OEMs will be able to provide eight years of security patches, and there will also be at least two updates to the vendor's Android Common Kernel during that time. This will make it easier for OEMs to release full Android OS updates even toward the end of a device's lifespan.How long should your phone last?This is just the latest attempt from Google and its partners to address Android's original sin. Google's open approach to Android roped in numerous OEMs to create and sell hardware, all of which were managing their update schemes individually and relying on hardware vendors to provide updated drivers and other componentswhich they usually didn't. As a result, even expensive flagship phones could quickly fall behind and miss out on features and security fixes.Google undertook successive projects over the last decade to improve Android software support. For example, Project Mainline in Android 10 introduced system-level modules that Google can update via Play Services without a full OS update. This complemented Project Treble, which was originally released in Android 8.0 Oreo. Treble separated the Android OS from the vendor implementation, giving OEMs the ability to update Android without changing the low-level code.The legacy of Treble is still improving outcomes, too. Qualcomm cites Project Treble as a key piece of its update-extending initiative. The combination of consistent vendor layer support and fresh kernels will, according to Qualcomm, make it faster and easier for OEMs to deploy updates. However, they don't have to.Update development is still the responsibility of device makers, with Google implementing only a loose framework of requirements. That means companies can build with Qualcomm's most powerful chips and say "no thank you" to the extended support window. OnePlus has refused to match Samsung and Google's current seven-year update guarantee, noting that pushing new versions of Android to older phones can cause performance and battery life issuessomething we saw in action when Google's Pixel 4a suffered a major battery life hit with the latest update.Samsung has long pushed the update envelope, and it has a tight relationship with Qualcomm to produce Galaxy-optimized versions of its processors. So it won't be surprising if Samsung tacks on another year to its update commitment in its next phone release. Google, too, emphasizes updates on its Pixel phones. Google doesn't use Qualcomm chips, but it will probably match any move Samsung makes. The rest of the industry is anyone's guesseight years of updates is a big commitment, even with Qualcomm's help.Ryan WhitwamSenior Technology ReporterRyan WhitwamSenior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he's written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards. 23 Comments