With the release of the Pixel 8 in 2023, Google made a widely celebrated announcement. Going forward, Pixel phones would receive seven years of software updates — not only routine security patches but major OS upgrades, too. It was a more robust promise than even Samsung, the largest vendor of Android devices, had made in 2019 when it pledged three years of major OS updates for lower end Galaxy devices and seven for select flagships. A quick loss of software support had previously been a major...
