Google Shocks Pixel 6, Pixel 7, Fold Owners With 2 Years of Bonus…

As a part of this month’s December Pixel update, Google appears to have confirmed that they are extending the years of support on some older Pixel devices. Specifically, the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and Pixel Fold will all see another 2 years of OS updates.

At the time that Google shared news of the December Pixel Feature Drop, they updated a Google Support page that we track that shows the schedule and years of support for each Pixel phone, tablet, and foldable. That page saw a major change (archive) this morning that wiped out the previous format and switched to three separate lists of device types. Those lists include one with older Pixel devices that no longer receive updates, one with devices receiving 5 years of updates, and another for those with 7 years of updates.

The list of devices seeing 5 years of updates is the change here.

Before today, this Google support page showed that the Pixel 6 series, Pixel 7 series, and the Pixel Fold would all see 5 years of security updates, but only 3 years of Android OS version updates. As of right now, Google has changed the wording to suggest a full 5 years of both security and OS updates. This is a big change!

Here’s what the page says now:

These phones, including Pixel Fold, will get updates for 5 years starting from when the device first became available on the Google Store in the US.

This includes 5 years of OS and security updates, and may also include new and upgraded features with Pixel Drops.

These phones are:

• Pixel Fold
• Pixel 7a
• Pixel 7 Pro
• Pixel 7
• Pixel 6 Pro
• Pixel 6
• Pixel 6a

So what we have is Google quietly extending the OS version window for the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and Pixel Fold to a full 5 years now, matching the years for security updates. And we know this is a recent change, because we updated our Pixel schedule page only a couple of weeks ago and it still shows the 3 years of updates for those devices.. We’ll be updating it again shortly.

Rather than the Pixel 6 line seeing a final OS update as Android 15, it could now go all of the way through Android 17. That’s awesome.