Samsung has announced that it will extend the time it will get its Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Devices released from 2019 will now receive at least four years of security updates.
Previously, Samsung offered monthly or quarterly security updates for at least the first two years of a device’s lifetime, the frequency of which is determined by the device itself. More premium phones like the Galaxy Note or Galaxy S lines get monthly updates, while budget-friendly models like the 2020 Galaxy A71 5G are updated quarterly. Samsung also drops from its higher-end devices to quarterly updates after a certain time, such as the Galaxy S8 series.
It’s important to note that Samsung only promises four years of “regular security updates”, which is actually Samsung’s lowest update rate, reserved for devices that still support it, but without the promise of a monthly or quarterly cadence. After all, the new announcement means that Samsung is extending the useful life of dozens of devices, including some cheaper entry-level phones that usually can’t see the kind of long-term support.
To put the commitment in perspective, Google itself promises only “at least three years” of security updates for its Pixel phones. And there are far fewer models of Pixel hardware to support than the 40 plus phones and tablets for which Samsung promises security updates.
The other important caveat here is that Samsung has been promising security updates for at least four years, not Android updates. Samsung done provides support for at least three “generations” of Android updates in 2020, but only for some of its phones.
Samsung’s news today is also not the same commitment that Google and Qualcomm made in December to ensure that phones with new Qualcomm chips will support both four Android OS updates and four years of security updates. Although the general goals were the same, the announcement only applied to devices starting with the Snapdragon 888 and later, while Samsung is retroactively making its commitment to devices as old as 2019.