There was speculation until recently, but now Google has made it official. From now on we offer a previously unattainable update supply for the company’s own Pixel smartphones. Starting with the Google Pixel 8 Pro, Google wants to deliver updates for seven years – including for the operating system.
Google presented its new Pixel smartphones today and announced a significant innovation that ensures that the new models will have a significantly longer life cycle, at least in terms of software. The US internet company wants to deliver updates for seven years. This explicitly applies not only to security updates, feature packages, and bug fixes but also to operating system upgrades.
Most recently, it was common practice at Google for the Pixel series smartphones to be supplied with new versions of the Android operating system for three years. The supply of new features and security updates was guaranteed for five years. Now this is changing fundamentally, with Google leaving Samsung, the previous update leader, behind.
Where Samsung recently began distributing operating system updates for a full five years, Google is adding another two years, so that the new Google Pixel 8 and Google Pixel 8 Pro models, which were released from the factory with Google Android 14 released today, even have an upgrade to Android 21 should receive.
According to Google, the update promise applies from the day the respective new models are available in the US market. Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent this offer will actually be taken up in the future. Only very few customers are actually likely to actively use their devices over a period of seven years. In most cases, a newer model should be purchased beforehand for other reasons.
Nevertheless, the promise to provide the Pixel 8 series models with updates over seven years is certainly good news – even in view of the growing mountains of electronic waste. With an extended software lifecycle, the devices can potentially be used for significantly longer. For most Android smartphone manufacturers is – if at all – only a promise to deliver new operating system versions over two to three years.
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