Motorola Confirms That It Will Not Commit To Monthly Security Patches (arstechnica.com)

If you are planning to purchase the Moto Z or a Moto G4 smartphone, be prepared to not see security updates rolling out to your phone every month -- and in a timely fashion. After Ars Technica called out Motorola's security policy as "unacceptable" and "insecure," in a recent review, the company tried to handle the PR disaster, but later folded. In a statement to the publication, the company said: Motorola understands that keeping phones up to date with Android security patches is important to our customers. We strive to push security patches as quickly as possible. However, because of the amount of testing and approvals that are necessary to deploy them, it's difficult to do this on a monthly basis for all our devices. It is often most efficient for us to bundle security updates in a scheduled Maintenance Release (MR) or OS upgrade. As we previously stated, Moto Z Droid Edition will receive Android Security Bulletins. Moto G4 will also receive them.Monthy security updates -- or the lack thereof -- remains one of the concerning issues that plagues the vast majority of Android devices. Unless it's a high-end smartphone, it is often rare to see the smartphone OEM keep the device's software updated for more than a year. Even with a flagship phone, the software update -- and corresponding security patches -- are typically guaranteed for only 18 to 24 months. Reports suggest that Google has been taking this issue seriously, and at some point, it was considering publicly shaming its partners that didn't roll out security updates to their respective devices fast enough.

Comments

This is an Android Problem

[purpledinoz]

In my view, this problem can only be solved by improving the Android OS itself. They need to carve out way more things out of the core OS and make them updateable through the Play Store. Microsoft manages to do this via Windows Updates, I don't see why Google can't figure it out. What makes things worse are carrier specific builds. Apple managed to do tell them to F off, Google should too.