Qualcomm wants OEMs to have easier time updating Android, will announce something later this year
Qualcomm knows that updating older chips is complicated (and expensive) for Android OEMs.
JoriPress
- A Qualcomm executive told Android Authority that the company is working to make it easier for OEMs to keep devices with older Qualcomm chipsets up to date.
- The company understands that updating older devices is currently “complicated,” not to mention expensive.
- There will be some announcements on this topic “later this year,” presumably surrounding the launch of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
Over the past two years, Android OEMs have really stepped up their game related to keeping older devices updated with security patches and Android upgrades. Led by Samsung and Google — which both offer up to seven years of support for certain devices — this is a sharp change from even five years ago, in which two years of support was the disappointing norm.
Although timely and extensive Android updates/upgrades are very complex with bottlenecks from multiple sources, one of the cogs in that machine is the chipset vendor, i.e., Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, etc. As chips get older, the creators of those chipsets tend to move on from them as far as support goes, making it more difficult for OEMs to keep device software current. Historically, this has been a significant factor in devices only receiving one or two Android upgrades — or sometimes none at all.
