Google Ends Security Updates for Its Pixel 3 Line Just Three Years After Launch ⇥ vice.com

Aaron Gordon, Vice:

I think of phones in much the same way I think of refrigerators or stoves. It’s an appliance, something I need but feel no attachment to, and as long as it keeps fulfilling that need, I don’t want to spend money replacing it for no real reason. The Pixel 3 fulfills my needs, so I don’t want to spend $600 on the Pixel 6, which seems to be just another phone that does all the phone things.

But I have to get rid of it because Google has stopped supporting all Pixel 3s. Despite being just three years old, no Pixel 3 will ever receive another official security update. Installing security updates is the one basic thing everyone needs to do for their own digital security. If you don’t even get them, then you’re vulnerable to every security flaw discovered since your last patch. In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, “We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device.”

Conspiracy theories about planned obsolescence in Apple’s lineup appear like clockwork, but 2015’s iPhone 6S supports all the same security patches in iOS 15 as the newest iPhone models. My iPhone X, released one year before the Pixel 3, is running just fine with the latest software updates.

Meanwhile, Google declares Pixel models unsupported after just three years, which seems to be something of a standard among Android manufacturers.