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Qualcomm's $1,500 Snapdragon Insiders phone is barely getting any updates
- Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Insiders phone has missed nearly six months of security updates.
- The company says the next security update will arrive on June 20, although gave no mention of an Android 12 upgrade.
- Qualcomm has only committed to releasing security updates every two or three months.
Qualcomm customers are not happy with the state of updates for the company’s flagship Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, leaving them open to security threats and vulnerabilities.
Qualcomm released the Snapdragon Insiders phone as a way to show off its hardware capabilities and packed the phone with an impressive array of hardware specs — sometimes at the expense of finesse and overall design aesthetic. Unfortunately for users, even the high-end hardware is now being held back by inconsistent updates, no upgrade to Android 12, and bugs that aren’t being addressed.
First noticed by XDA-Developers, a thread popped up on Reddit pointing out that the last update Qualcomm’s phone received was on March 18. That update only brought the phone current with the January security update. Since that time, the phone has missed security updates for February, March, April, and May, with the June update just around the corner.
Read more: What are Android security updates, and why do they matter?
To make matters worse, when Qualcomm released the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, users were promised four years of regular security updates. The user who started the thread asked one of the Qualcomm moderators to update the group on the current status, and the response wasn’t exactly what anyone had hoped for:
I talked to the team and got some answers. The next security patch will be released on June 20, and new ones will be released every two to three months after that. Hope this helps.
Missing was any mention of when users will gain access to Android 12.
Unfortunately, Qualcomm’s response is unacceptable for any company shipping a flagship Android smartphone, let alone one that costs $1,499. There’s simply no excuse for not providing security updates to users for nearly six months and then only committing to providing them every couple of months going forward, especially when other manufacturers are providing them on a monthly basis.
With growing security threats and bad actors increasingly targeting Android, Qualcomm’s users deserve far better — especially after paying for a premium experience.