It breaks down with 5 years of major OS updates and 7 years of security patches. Yesterday, Nothing confirmed the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 as the SoC of choice...
Read that as five years of major OS updates and seven years of security patches.
Software updates can be deployed regionally either based on carrier or by product SKU. If there are different SKUs for North American vs EU phones, which is almost universally the case because of differing regional requirements such as radio technology, target price points and so on. That means that phone model ‘X (NA)’ could have a different update schedule than ‘X (EU)’.
Why? money, of course. There is a small cost to supporting a SKU for updates, even if it’s the same software that’s already being deployed to another SKU. That increases if the two SKUs have different processors (Samsung does this). On top of that, longer update schedules means people aren’t replacing their phones as often, which means theoretically less sales - though I find that claim dubious as many people replace their phones long before they lose software support.
So yes, while it’s possible that a company might honour a 7 year update schedule outside of EU, it would be by their choice to do so.
Software updates can be deployed regionally either based on carrier or by product SKU. If there are different SKUs for North American vs EU phones, which is almost universally the case because of differing regional requirements such as radio technology, target price points and so on. That means that phone model ‘X (NA)’ could have a different update schedule than ‘X (EU)’.
Why? money, of course. There is a small cost to supporting a SKU for updates, even if it’s the same software that’s already being deployed to another SKU. That increases if the two SKUs have different processors (Samsung does this). On top of that, longer update schedules means people aren’t replacing their phones as often, which means theoretically less sales - though I find that claim dubious as many people replace their phones long before they lose software support.
So yes, while it’s possible that a company might honour a 7 year update schedule outside of EU, it would be by their choice to do so.