Qualcomm wants to make it easier for phone makers to issue Android updates

2024-06-28

Android updates are increasingly supported for longer and longer periods of time on top of the line, high-end, or upper-midrange devices across brands, but lower-midrange and especially entry-level phones have it a lot harder. Qualcomm wants to do all it can to change that, however.

The issuance of updates is very dependent on the maker of the chipset in your phone, as that company has to still actively support the SoC, and for most cheaper ones, the support window ends much sooner than for more expensive ones, perhaps understandably. Even at higher price points, the cadence of updates isn't always what it should be - monthly security updates are only provided monthly by a handful of brands, for example.

So this is where Qualcomm comes in. According to Chris Patrick, SVP and General Manager of Handsets at Qualcomm, the company has been working on making it easier for OEMs to keep all of their phones updated.

Here's what Patrick told Android Authority:

It is very complicated for a customer — an OEM — to get security updates, to get Android version updates, and then get it to every end user. It’s actually very expensive and very complicated. One of the things we’ve been working on for the past several years with Google and with the OEMs is to change the structure of inline code — to kind of change the machinery for how we do those updates. You’ll see that, later on this year, we’ll make some announcements about some of those changes we’ve made to facilitate this and help the whole ecosystem keep Android phones closer to up to date.

Patrick says this has been a significant concern for Qualcomm for a while, and so the company is planning to announce something to address it.

Unfortunately there are no further details, so we don't really know when to expect such an announcement, but given the fact that Qualcomm is holding its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii this October, we assume that's when it's most likely to happen.

Of course, that doesn't mean things will magically change for all devices instantly from the next day, but this gives us some hope that updates will arrive in a more timely fashion for all devices out there.