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Comment by parheric | Hacker News Reader

Yeh I doubt this will ever happen in a way that provides real value for pixel owners… when they started using their own chips it was meant to be 5 years, then turned out to be 3 years of updates.

They’ve had the opportunity for I provide security updates for their old pixels for years but chose not too. So this is just marketing fluff to get a few more sales…

And in typical Google style after 3 years they’ll say “yeh… about those 7 years, we really meant 3”

Pixel pass anyone?

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Any source for pixel phones that were promised 5 years, only getting three?

I think they are referring to the Pixel 6 [1]. If the same happened again, Google might announce that the Pixel 8 will receive 4 or 5 years of major Android version updates and 7 years of security updates.

However, the alleged leaked specs for the Pixel 8 explicitly state "7 years of OS and security updates" [2], so I think they do actually intend on 7 years of major Android version updates.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22735485/google-pixel-6-...

[2] https://www.91mobiles.com/hub/google-pixel-8-pro-specificati...

Pixel 6 was promising 5 years of security updates from the start. Like, from the very first announcement. As evidence, note that your link is from the time of the launch, not some kind of bait and switch like the OP claimed.

As an owner of an Android phone (Pixel 4a) that just reached EOL and for which a potential 0-click RCE 0day was just released (the webp thing), I'd take three more years of security updates on the spot. But well, I guess time for a new phone.

Installing LineageOS is cheaper then a new phone.

The link referring to 7 years of update. If you follow the leaker on Twitter kamila in the original leak tweet they mention it can be 5 years of OS update + 3 years of security updates or something along the lines. The leakers isn't sure if it will be full 7 years of OS updates. I think other people reporting on the leak are failing to differentiate OS updates vs security updates making people to think Google rolled back on updates.

There's already an unpatched full login bypass

https://bugs.xdavidhu.me/google/2022/11/10/accidental-70k-go...

Is that still unpatched on the Pixel 6? As far as I can find the CVE has been patched in the Android security bulletin from 2022-11-05, which the Pixels receive (that + the patches specified in the separate Pixel security bulletin).

It looks like the Pixel 4 didn't get the update. From what I can tell, the Pixel 4/4 XL received the security updates as promised by Google during its announcement: https://web.archive.org/web/20191015163036/https://support.g...

I don't really understand why you would spend Pixel 4 XL money on a phone that will only receive three years of updates, but it's not like Google hid their support timeline from any of their customers.

Unpatched on a phone that was ever promised security updates in that time window?

There's a very important chip in the Pixel that isn't made by Google.

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