Google promised 7 years of software updates for the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung followed suit with the exact same promise for the Galaxy S24, S24+, and S24 Ultra. OnePlus, on the other hand, promises only four major Android updates and five years of security patches for its flagships.
If you expected OnePlus to pivot to reach the same position as Google and Samsung, you will be disappointed. The company is very happy with its decision not to offer more than five years of support for its devices, and now it has decided to explain why. Turns out it all has to do with sandwiches.
OnePlus 12R (left) and OnePlus 12 (right)
Bear with us. OnePlus COO Kinder Liu was recently interviewed about the situation and has this to say:
Simply offering longer software update policies completely misses the point. It’s not just software update policies that are important to the user, so is the smoothness of your phone’s user experience. Imagine your phone is a sandwich. Some manufacturers now say that the stuffing in their sandwiches – the software on their phone – will still be good to eat in seven years. But what they don’t tell you is that the bread in the sandwich – the user experience – could go moldy after four years. Suddenly a seven-year software update policy doesn’t matter anymore, because the rest of your phone experience is terrible. When our competitors say their software policy will last seven years, remember that their phone’s battery may not last.
Liu also highlighted OnePlus’ stress testing of its phones with TÜV SUD to simulate years of use and ensure “fast and smooth” performance even after four years. According to findings published by Counterpoint Research, Android users tend to upgrade their smartphone within four years, so OnePlus was probably thinking about this when it decided on its upgrade policy. Of course, more people might put off updates if device manufacturers’ update policies become longer, so this might just be a chicken-or-egg problem.
One Plus 12
To put all this into layman’s terms: OnePlus believes that supporting phones for longer than it already doesn’t make financial sense since most people will move on to other devices anyway, and updates that come beyond four or five years could worsen the overall user experience: owners of older Pixels seem to know a thing or two about this, from what we’ve gathered.
Start a new Thread