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Android P Drops Support For Nexus Phones, Pixel Tablet (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-the-road dept.

Google has launched the first developer preview of Android P, the company's new mobile operating system that brings new features and improvements over Android Oreo. Unfortunately, developers will only have a small set of blessed hardware to choose from with Android P: the Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL. Google's Nexus smartphones and Pixel C tablet will not get Android P when it's fully released. The Verge reports: Eventually, Android P will ship on new phones from other manufacturers, along with the handful of handsets that third-parties bother to update, but there are a couple Android mainstays that won't get to enjoy this marvelous future: Google's Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P phones, and the oft-forgotten Pixel C tablet. As Ars Technica confirmed with Google, those devices won't be getting Android P when it's released fully. Also, as Android Police notes, there's no Developer Preview image for the Nexus Player, which came out in 2014, so it might be done getting updates as well. It's 2018, and we're beyond the two years of major OS update support these devices were promised, so this isn't hugely surprising. All three devices will continue to get monthly security updates through at least November of this year, but they'll remain stuck on Android 8.1 for an underlying OS as far as official Google updates go.

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Google is pretty forthcoming about updates by Streetlight · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check the link below. Scroll down to and open "Nexus devices" under "When you'll get Android updates" to see when Google will not guarantee updates.

    https://support.google.com/nex...

    --
    In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
  2. Re:Pretty disappointed by n329619 · · Score: 4, Informative

    But I am massively disappointed by the fact that Google have erased the Nexus line and expect me to jump up to a top-tier phone...

    In Android land, you get the flexibility to pick a whole selection of devices with personal customization. But it also means you get quite the trade-off. Cheap and you get bloat and no-update or Google-tier and you get expensive hardware and get updates. Compare to iPhone land, iPhone only gives you one option, Apple-tier expensive hardware and get updates. After all, if you want updates you need to pay devs to update your device somehow.

    Depend on your preference, picking an iPhone might be your easiest and best choice at providing you long update cycle. But if you really want your current Nexus 5X to last a little longer, you could spend some time to install a custom rom still supported after the end of support from either xda-developers or lineageOS. If you donation or pay the devs there, they will be encouraged to continue to support your device, keeping it up to date.

    There's Android One but after reading their website I still can't figure out exactly what the hell it is.

    What is Android One - tl;dr devices where manufacturers have committed to give clean android updates to the device. As for how long, it will be at least 1.5 years after device launch.

    You can buy them by clicking on the devices at the website. If not, you could just copy the device name and ebay / amazon it to Australia. It's not that hard if you really want one. Not to mention, they are cheaper than Pixel phones.

    Pixel phone on the other hand is still directly supported by Google and get 2-3 years at device launch (1-2 years remaining).