Qualcomm wants OEMs to have easier time updating Android, will announce something later this year
www.androidauthority.com
Qualcomm knows that updating older chips is complicated (and expensive) for Android OEMs. The company will make this a bit easier this year.

TLDR

  • 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.
  • @TheGrandNagusEnglish
    26•5 months ago

    Do they? Presumably they’d open source and upstream their firmware or at the very least provide longer software support if that were the case.

    • @[email protected]English
      15•5 months ago

      Yeah, even the TLDR makes it sound more like Qualcomm is yielding to the pressure from OEMs who want to be able to offer longer updates

      • @[email protected]English
        2•5 months ago

        What’s funny to me is that you could say Apple is the reason for this.

        Apple’s had longer OS support for their phones than any Android manufacturer for a while, but then Google started catching up when they got their own chips and now Samsung and the others are pushing Qualcomm to quit their bullshit.

        I do use an iPhone myself currently, but if Qualcomm opens their shit up enough that OEMs can provide at LEAST 5 years of software updates to their flagships, I might go back to Androidland (though I’m not sure what to even consider, I dislike Samsung and OnePlus disappointed me so hard with the OxygenOS->ColorOS switch that it’s literally the reason I went to iOS.

        I suppose any Android phone would be good if I ran a custom ROM like I used to, but a couple of years ago bank apps in my country started checking the integrity of the bootloader and whatever. I couldn’t find any way around it back then, but maybe there’s something now?