As a whole, updates for Android have improved greatly as a result of increased efforts from smartphone manufacturers to deliver quicker security upgrades. They’re not all nice apples, either. The $1,500 Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders that Qualcomm unveiled last year was abandoned for months without any upgrades.
Last week, Reddit thread brought attention to Qualcomm’s decision to leave its Snapdragon Insiders phone essentially unsupported by any updates. The phone was roughly six months out of date when the most recent update, which came in March, only included the January 2022 security patch.
That’s obviously a problem, and it sparked questions, particularly in light of what Qualcomm claimed when the product was introduced. Qualcomm stated that the Insiders gadget would come pre-installed with Android 11 and receive regular security upgrades for four years.
The lack of Android 12 on the device nearly a year later is still a problem, but the lack of frequent security upgrades may be more serious.
The device’s manufacturer and maintainer, Asus, preserved up a changelog , which demonstrates that consistent upgrades were arriving virtually monthly between August and December of 2021 before coming to a sudden halt.
But this issue will shortly be rectified. As XDA pointed out, a Qualcomm spokesperson provided an update to that Reddit thread and confirmed that the upcoming upgrade for the Snapdragon Insiders phone will arrive on June 20. Although the delivery of the security patch was not specified, one would assume that Junes would be it.
Upgrade 6/22: Qualcomm and Asus have released the Snapdragon Insiders phone’s new update as promised (through Android Police ), but not without some issues.
Despite being introduced on June 20, The update still uses Android 11 and only updates the phone’s security patch until April 2022. The upgrade, at least temporarily, damages Google Pay and the Play Store, according to users on Reddit . This is due to the fact that the phone is no longer Play Certified, which was presumably a mistake on Qualcomm’s or Asus’ side.
From Qualcomm’s official website, removed a mention of Android 12 is also available for this device.
This is exactly the antithesis of how Android updates are meant to operate, especially on hardware at this price point, if that wasn’t abundantly evident.
This phone will now receive the bare minimum. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this scenario will get much better. In addition to announcing a June upgrade, Qualcomm also stated that the product will receive frequent updates every two to three months.
Hello, hdoublearp I asked the group and received several responses. After June 20th, new security patches will be provided around every two to three months. Hope this was useful.
That’s significantly slower than the speed of smartphones like the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy, which is disheartening to see on a product bearing the Qualcomm name. The fact that it is on a smartphone with a $1,500 price tag makes matters worse. Samsung and Google offer monthly upgrades for devices that cost less than 25% of that much.
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