The number that is not on the box
Every phone listing in India tells you the processor, the RAM, the camera megapixels and the battery capacity. None of them tells you how long the manufacturer will keep the phone secure, which is the specification that decides how long you can actually keep using it.
The spread is larger than most buyers expect, and it does not follow price:
| Phone | Price | OS upgrades | Security patches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motorola G85 | Rs17,999 | 1 | 3 years |
| Samsung Galaxy M35 | Rs16,999 | 4 | 5 years |
| OnePlus Nord 4 | Rs29,999 | 4 | 6 years |
| Google Pixel 8a | Rs52,999 | 7 | 7 years |
| Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra | Rs1,29,999 | 7 | 7 years |
The Motorola and the Samsung are a thousand rupees apart. One is supported for three years and the other for five, with four times the OS upgrades. That is not a small difference in a phone most people keep for four years.
Why patches matter more than upgrades
These two things get conflated, and they are not the same.
An OS upgrade moves your phone from Android 15 to Android 16. It brings features, a refreshed interface, and occasionally slower performance on older hardware.
A security patch fixes known vulnerabilities in whichever Android version you are already on. Google publishes these monthly in the Android Security Bulletin, and every one of them is a public description of a way the phone can be attacked.
That publication is the point. When patches stop, vulnerabilities do not stop being discovered — they stop being fixed on your device, while remaining publicly documented. A phone two years past its last patch is running software with a published list of unrepaired holes in it.
For a device holding UPI apps, banking logins, work email and identity documents, that is the practical end of its safe life. It usually arrives years before the phone feels slow.
What the commitments actually mean
Three manufacturers publish explicit commitments and one does not.
- Google commits to 7 years of OS upgrades and 7 years of security patches on Pixel 8 series and later, counted from the device launch date rather than your purchase date.
- Samsung commits to 7 years on recent flagships and 4 upgrades with 5 years of patches across much of the mid-range, which is unusually generous at that price.
- OnePlus commits to 4 upgrades and 6 years of patches on the Nord 4, notably longer on patches than on upgrades.
- Apple commits to nothing formally. Six to seven years is what past iPhones received, which is a strong pattern and not a promise. When comparing against a Pixel, you are comparing a published commitment against an inference.
One detail worth knowing: commitments run from the device launch date, not from when you buy it. A phone bought eighteen months after launch has eighteen months less support remaining than the headline number suggests.
The cost-per-supported-year calculation
Support length changes what a phone actually costs. Dividing price by supported years gives a figure that is far more useful than the price alone:
| Phone | Price | Patch years | Cost per supported year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motorola G85 | Rs17,999 | 3 | Rs6,000 |
| Samsung Galaxy M35 | Rs16,999 | 5 | Rs3,400 |
| OnePlus Nord 4 | Rs29,999 | 6 | Rs5,000 |
| Google Pixel 8a | Rs52,999 | 7 | Rs7,571 |
On that measure the Rs16,999 Samsung is the cheapest phone here to own, and the Rs17,999 Motorola is nearly twice as expensive per year despite costing a thousand rupees more on the shelf.
This is not the only thing that matters — performance, camera and build all count — but it is the one thing no listing lets you compare, and it moves the answer more than most of the specifications that are printed.
Every phone in this catalogue, compared
The five-row table above is a sample. Here is the full set, sorted by what actually matters — how long the phone keeps receiving security patches.
| Phone | Price | OS upgrades | Patches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Pixel 8a | Rs52,999 | 7 | 7 years |
| Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra | Rs1,29,999 | 7 | 7 years |
| Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max | Rs1,59,900 | Not published | ~6-7 years, inferred |
| Apple iPhone 13 | Rs44,900 | Not published | ~6-7 years, inferred |
| OnePlus Nord 4 | Rs29,999 | 4 | 6 years |
| Samsung Galaxy M35 | Rs16,999 | 4 | 5 years |
| Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 | Rs1,64,999 | 4 | 5 years |
| Realme Narzo 70 Turbo | Rs15,999 | 2 | 3 years |
| Redmi 13C 5G | Rs10,499 | 2 | 3 years |
| Motorola G85 | Rs17,999 | 1 | 3 years |
Two things stand out when the list is ordered this way rather than by price.
The first is that price predicts almost nothing. A Rs52,999 Pixel and a Rs1,29,999 Samsung offer identical support. A Rs16,999 Samsung outlasts a Rs17,999 Motorola by two years and three OS versions. The Rs1,64,999 Galaxy Z Fold5 is supported for two years less than the Pixel costing a third as much.
The second is that Apple sits in a different column entirely. Not shorter — probably longer than most Android phones — but unpublished. Every Android figure above is a commitment the manufacturer has written down. Apple’s is a pattern observed across a decade of past devices. Those are different kinds of claim, and a comparison table that treats them as equivalent is misleading.
What actually happens when patches stop
The phone does not change on the day support ends. Nothing breaks, nothing slows down, and no warning appears. That is precisely why the date passes unnoticed.
What changes is on the other side. Google publishes the Android Security Bulletin monthly, and each entry is a public description of a vulnerability with a severity rating. Before your support ends, those descriptions arrive alongside a fix. After it ends, the descriptions keep arriving and the fixes do not.
The gap compounds. A phone six months past its last patch is missing roughly six bulletins. A phone two years past is missing about twenty-four, and every one of those is documented publicly, in detail, for anyone who wants to look.
This matters more in India than in many markets, because of what an Indian phone holds. UPI is tied to the device. Banking apps, DigiLocker, Aadhaar-linked services and work email typically live on the same handset. The consequence of a compromise is not an inconvenience.
The resale consequence
Support length has a second effect that shows up when you sell.
The Indian second-hand phone market has become noticeably better informed about update policies, and a phone with four years of patches remaining commands a visibly higher price than an equivalent handset with six months left. Buyers ask now, which they did not five years ago.
That works in both directions. A long-supported phone is worth more when you upgrade, which partly offsets its purchase price. A short-supported phone depreciates faster than its condition alone would suggest, because a buyer is purchasing a device with a visible expiry date.
Practically, that means the cost-per-supported-year figure earlier in this article understates the gap. The Samsung M35 is not merely cheaper per supported year than the Motorola — it also retains more value at the point you replace it.
What to do with a phone past support
An unsupported phone is not waste. It is a device that should stop doing certain things.
- Remove financial and identity apps. Banking, UPI, DigiLocker, anything with payment credentials. This is the single most useful step and it takes ten minutes.
- Keep it off untrusted networks. Public Wi-Fi on an unpatched device is the specific combination worth avoiding.
- Repurpose it deliberately. A media player, a dashcam, a security camera on the home network, a spare hotspot, or a first phone for a child with no financial apps installed. All are reasonable uses for hardware that still works.
- Consider a maintained custom ROM if the model is well supported by one. This genuinely extends security life, and it also voids warranty and requires competence — a real option, not a casual one.
What not to do is keep using it exactly as before on the grounds that it still feels fine. Feeling fine is the problem: the hardware outlives the software by years, and nothing about the experience signals which side of that line you are on.
How to check before you buy
- Find the manufacturer commitment, not the review. Google, Samsung and OnePlus publish support policies on their own sites. A review that says "should get updates for a while" is not a commitment.
- Check the launch date, not the purchase date. Support is counted from launch. Subtract the months the phone has already been on sale.
- Read the patch number separately from the upgrade number. They are frequently different, and the patch number is the one that decides safety.
- Verify the current patch level on the device. Settings, About phone, Android security update. A phone already months behind at purchase is a warning about how that model is maintained.
The short version
Software support is the least visible and most consequential specification on a phone. It ranges from one OS upgrade to seven at prices that overlap, it is published by three of the four major manufacturers and inferred for the fourth, and it determines the point at which a perfectly functional device stops being safe for banking.
Check it before the processor. The processor decides how the phone feels for two years. Support decides whether there is a fifth.
