The Nothing Phone (3) will be getting the longest support timeline of any Nothing Phone thus far, but it still lags just a bit behind the rest of the industry in terms of Android updates.
Nothing is dropping teasers left and right regarding its next smartphone, most recently revealing that the device will be running on top of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset from Qualcomm. That has generated a bit of backlash given the many “true flagship” teasers around this device, but the other question has been around why a different chip wasn’t used.
For years, Nothing has used last-gen chipsets in its smartphones. While expectations pointed to Snapdragon 8 Elite for the Nothing Phone (3), it was thought that a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 would be the obvious alternative. In responding to a question of why last year’s chip wasn’t used, Nothing’s Akis Evangelidis says that support timelines were a part of the reason. With Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Nothing would have been stuck with “default” support timelines of just four years.
With Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, Nothing Phone (3) will see five years of major Android OS updates, and seven years of security updates.
This is the longest support timeline Nothing has offered to date. The Phone (3a) series gets six years of security updates, but only three OS updates. Nothing Phone (2), meanwhile, was only promised three years, meaning it might only get Android 16 or 17 before closing up shop. Keep in mind that Nothing still only delivers security updates on a bi-monthly basis, and major OS upgrades are often a bit delayed.
Nothing could technically stretch this out. Samsung, after all, promises seven years of OS updates on the Galaxy S24 series which is powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. However, after the first four years, Samsung is putting in additional work to make that happen, and that probably doesn’t make sense at Nothing’s scale.
Nothing Phone (3) launches on July 1.
More on Nothing:
- Nothing says Essential Space will remain free, at least in its current form
- Nothing says Phone (3) will be a ‘true flagship’ powered by Snapdragon 8s Gen 4
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