Motorola recently launched several phones with no Android updates but five years of security patches in Europe.
This could be due to the company’s interpretation of EU regulations regarding software updates.
It seems like the regulations don’t actually force smartphone makers to offer software updates at all.
One potential problem is apps could stop working if they target a more recent version of Android.
even Android 8 (2017) runs all the latest apps in 2026, it’s totally fine.
New versions of chrome require Android 10 from what I understand. Presumably apps that are less essential will be more likely to remove support for older versions sooner.
EDIT: I’ll also note here that even if an app “works,” it may be with degraded functionality (where the missing functionality is increasingly important). For instance, passkey support in external password managers requires Android 14.
oops you’re right, seems like they killed A8/9 with Chromium v139. damn :/
To my knowledge, has any Android API version been deprecated in under 5 years?
It doesn’t require deprecation. It could just be an app updating to use new APIs.
I read something about google’s play store requiring an API update every 2 years since late 2022, but i don’t know specifics.