Samsung may start offering more than five years of updates (not OS updates, though)

Google took the industry’s breath away last week when confirming that Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro owners are to enjoy seven years of OS and security updates. Samsung being Samsung can’t let that one pass by without taking a note (and without taking action).

That’s why the Korean tech giant is contemplating offering more than five years of security updates (via Android Authority). Until five minutes ago, when the Pixel 8 line was announced, Samsung was the champion among the rest of the Android big players in regards to update policies. Since 2021, Samsung is offering 4 years of Android updates and 5 years of security patches for Galaxy owners.

Shin-Chul Baik, the Principal Engineer and Technical Program Manager of the Security Team for Samsung’s Mobile eXperience division shared some of Samsung’s plans with SamMobile. In his words, Samsung has been “actively discussing” what the company should be doing about providing Galaxy owners with “long-term security updates” for “more than five years of support”. He mentioned that this vision of supporting devices for longer aligns with Samsung as well and that in light of new regulations coming up, Samsung is preparing to go beyond its current period of five years of support.

The new regulations he mentions are presumably referring to proposed EU regulations calling on companies to offer at least five years of system updates for their smartphones from 2025 onwards.

“System updates”, however, could be interpreted broadly – are we talking about OS upgrades or solely security updates? When it comes to state regulations, things can get messy, so we’ll have to wait to find out. In Baik’s words, though, Samsung is currently considering increasing the number of years of security support; nothing similar was said on the OS front for Galaxy devices.

Currently, Samsung delivers software security updates on an impressive scale: more than 1 billion devices are updated every month and over 10 billion annually. Over 150+ devices receive security updates on its monthly, quarterly, and bi-annual release schedules in markets across the world.