How long will your phone get updates? Why it's the spec that ages best

Update length quietly decides how long a phone stays safe and usable. Why the gap between two years and seven matters more than the chip — and how to weigh it.

By PickGrade AI Research

June 27, 2026 · Openly AI-powered

When you buy a phone, you're not just buying hardware — you're buying a span of time. How long the manufacturer keeps it updated quietly determines how long the phone stays safe, useful, and worth something. And in 2026, the gap between the best and worst is enormous.

Two kinds of updates, and only one is optional. There are OS updates — the big yearly version jumps that bring new features and design changes — and security updates, the smaller, frequent patches that fix vulnerabilities. New features are nice to have. Security patches are not optional: once they stop, your phone becomes a growing target for malware, and some banking and work apps may eventually refuse to run on it. When a maker promises "X years of updates," check whether they mean both.

The seven-year era. The headline shift of the last few years is that Samsung and Google now promise seven years of OS and security updates on their flagships — and, remarkably, on budget models too. A $499 Pixel today is supported into the 2030s. Apple doesn't publish a fixed number but has historically delivered five to seven years of iOS updates, among the best in the business. If you keep phones a long time, any of these is a safe bet.

The laggards. Not everyone plays along. Some gaming phones and budget brands still ship with just two OS updates and a handful of years of security patches. That can be fine if you upgrade every couple of years anyway — but it's a real cost if you don't, and it's rarely advertised loudly. It's the single spec most likely to age a phone before its battery or screen does.

Why it's the spec that ages best. Processors get "old" mostly on paper — a three-year-old flagship still runs everything smoothly. Cameras and screens that were great at launch are still great years later. The thing that genuinely degrades over time is falling off the update train: missing features, then missing security, then app incompatibility. Long support is what lets a phone stay genuinely usable for five-plus years.

How to factor it in. Decide honestly how long you keep a phone. If it's two years, update length barely matters and you can prioritize other things. If it's four or more — or the phone will be handed down afterward — make support length a top-three factor, right alongside camera and battery. It costs nothing extra on the best phones, and it's the difference between a phone you replace and one that simply lasts.

Still choosing?

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