Qualcomm delivers 8 years of updates with Snapdragon 8 Elite

Qualcomm announced yesterday its latest high-end mobile chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It promises to bump up support longevity significantly in software. Generally, flagships currently have their chipsets updated for about 4 years regarding OS and security updates. However, Qualcomm SVP Christopher Patrick, while on stage, announced that Snapdragon 8 Elite will offer support to phones for a whopping total of 8 years.

The extended support comes in the form of Board Support Packages, or BSP. The BSP includes the low-level binary drivers, integrated development environments (IDEs), and application programming interfaces (APIs) needed for an Android device's customized software build to function on the underlying processor hardware.

So if a phone debuts with Android 15, it will continue to receive BSP updates through Android 22 (assuming the current yearly Android version update cadence continues). This provides a much longer window with which device makers can push security patches and new features to their phones via software updates.

This 8-year support period could allow phones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite to stay relevant, but it still requires manufacturers to customize Qualcomm's BSPs and push them down to users. While the chip may offer 8 years of updates, the actual update rollout schedules will be set by the OEMs.

Recently, larger OEMs like Samsung and Google have expanded their update policies to 5-7 years. But many still offer minimal support. Not all Snapdragon 8 Elite handsets may see the full 8 years of software longevity unless practices change across the industry. Still, this upgraded BSP significantly raises the bar and puts pressure on brands to match Qualcomm's improved longevity standards.

In case you missed it, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process node. Qualcomm is also bringing its own Oryon CPUs to smartphones for the first time. It's worth noting that a Snapdragon 8 Elite is expected to power a number of Android smartphones including ASUS, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi and more.

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