When your Android phone ages out of updates, don’t blame the manufacturer. Sure, sometimes they’re the problem, but the deeper reason your phone stops getting updates is due to the chipset. More specifically, it’s the company that made the chipset decided to support.

The bottleneck is the Board Support Package

What the chipset vendor actually controls

Credit: Samsung

Your phone’s chipset (Qualcomm Snapdragon, MediaTek Dimensity, or the like) ships with a Board SUpport Package, which contains the low-level firmware, kernel drivers, and hardware abstraction layers that let Android talk to the silicon. The GPU, modem, image signal processor and security chips all need vendor-supplied drivers to work with each new version of Android.

When MediaTek or Qualcomm stops updating the BSP for a given chip, the phone’s OEM can end up stranded. It can’t legally or technically ship a major Android version without those driver updates, because the new Android kernel is incompatible with the old proprietary binaries that are written into the vendor partition. Even if the hardware is completely capable of running the new software, the OEM needs the updated drivers to make it happen.

The Surface Duo and LG V60 are textbook cases

When the silicon wall hits, even Microsoft can’t climb it

surfac

The original Surface Duo launched in September 2020 running Android 10, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, a chip already a year old at launch. Microsoft promised three years of updates and kept that promise: Android 11, then Android 12L, then end-of-support in September 2023. No Android 13, not because Microsoft gave up, but because the Snapdragon 855’s BSP didn’t support it. Same story with the Surface Duo 2: Snapdragon 888, one major OS update in three years, support ended October 2024. Both devices delivered exactly what was promised and hit a wall anyway.

The LG V60 ThinQ is another example. Running the Snapdragon 865, it got Android 13 in early 2023 as its final update, but LG had already shut down its entire mobile division by then. A company that no longer made phones kept pushing updates for a 2020 device right up until the Snapdragon 865’s support window ran out.

The chipset vendor sets the ceiling

The numbers behind the promises

Credit: Qualcomm

Qualcomm historically supported its chips for three to four years of Android updates. When that window closes, it stops validating new Android kernels on older silicon. When that happens, the phone makers are stuck in a frustrating middle position. They can sometimes push security patches without a kernel update, but every major Android version upgrade usually requires one. That could be why you’ll see monthly security patches, but not as many Android updates.

MediaTek’s record has possibly been even worse, with shorter support windows on budget and mid-range chips. Phones running on MediaTek silicon often fall off the update schedule faster than Qualcomm ones do, not because of cost-cutting by the phone-maker, but because the BSP had a shorter lifespan.

Luckily, the situation has improved a bit. In 202, Google and Qualcomm partnered to extend chipset support to four OS updates for all Snapdragon chips that launched with Android 11 or later. In February 2025, Qualcomm committed to up to eight years of OS and security updates for the Snapdragon 8 Elite and select 8 and 7-series chips, which is how Android phone manufacturers can offer longer-term support than before.

What Google’s Tensor chip actually solved

Owning the silicon means owning the timeline

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Credit: Google

When Google finally moved to its in-house Tensor chip on the Pixel 6, the benefit wasn’t only AI performance. Google got to own the entire stack. Because it controls Tensor, it can write new drivers when it needs to without having to wait for a third-party chipset vendor to update its BSP. Google confirmed that its shift to Tensor helped enable the jump from three to five and even seven years of support, making the Pixel 8 series the first to promise that support timeline. Apple, too, has the same situation and has for over a decade with its own in-house A-series chips, which is a big reason iPhones get five to six years of iOS updates without having to depend on anyone else’s BSP timeline.

In addition, Android 8.0 started separating the Android OS framework from vendor-specific code into different storage partitions. Called Project Treble, it meant that in theory, OEMs can update the system layer without having to touch the vendor layer, which can reduce the engineering cost of each Android upgrade. Of course, in practice, it still didn’t eliminate the chipset dependency altogether. The kernel drivers in that very vendor partition require BSP updates from the chipset maker, but it was a start, at least.

What to check before buying your next phone

The update lifespan on your Android phone is already determined before you buy it based on what chipset it uses and what that vendor has committed to support. A phone running the current Snapdragon 8 Elite chip has eight years of support, but one on a two-year-old mid-range chip might hit the BSP expiration before the OEM’s own support window closes.

If long-term updates matter to you, the list of Android phones actually delivering is still short: Google Pixels on Tensor, Samsung Galaxy S and Z-series flagships since the S24, and any phone running the Snapdragon 8 Elite. While it’s always important to keep your Android current with security updates, the chipset will set the window for how long you’ll get updates in general.

Brand

Google

SoC

Tensor G5

Display

6.3″ Actua display

RAM

12 GB

Storage

128 GB, 256 GB

Battery

4970 mAh

Google’s flagship smartphone, the Google Pixel 10 features the Tensor G5 processor, an outstanding triple-camera system, and seven years of software updates. This is a phone you can rely on for years to come.

SoC

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Display

6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X

RAM

12 GB

Storage

256 or 512 GB

Battery

4,900 mAh

Operating System

Android