“Germany wants manufacturers to provide updates for smartphones for 7 years”

Striking news from Germany. The government of our eastern neighbors would be planning to oblige manufacturers to keep smartphones up to date with updates for a period of 7 years.

Germans want longer updates

The German government has drawn up a new plan to extend the life of smartphones. This involves extending the update policy. The German government is talking about a period of seven years. The European Union is currently considering making updates mandatory for manufacturers for five years.

Incidentally, this concerns security updates and therefore not updates to the operating system. In recent years we have already seen the necessary improvements in the update policy at manufacturers. OnePlus keeps security updates for its more expensive devices for three years; Samsung does this for four years and even three years of Android updates. Google is rumored to plan to update its new Pixel devices with security patches for a period of five years.

A period of seven years of updates would not be a bad idea for smartphones, after all, the question is whether it is necessary to buy a new smartphone every two years. Looking at the computers, updating for a long time is quite normal. A Windows 7 computer from 2012 received updates up to and including 2020. The question is whether the German idea will actually be implemented. At the moment it is election period in Germany, which means that all kinds of things can be shouted. However, it is expected that the European requirement of 5 years of updates will be introduced in the coming years.