Samsung is already one of the Android manufacturers that offers the longest software updates for its products. Its recent Galaxy flagships are supported with seven years of software updates, ensuring that customers don’t miss out on any software improvements for the next seven years.

There are a number of conditions that need to be met before Samsung can provide such long-term software support for a product. This isn’t a task that Samsung can accomplish alone; it needs to work closely with Google and a number of processor designers.

With its new Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is helping Android manufacturers provide eight years of software updates for their products, something that Samsung could potentially take advantage of.

The Galaxy S25 series could get eight years of software updates

Here are the conditions that need to be met before an Android manufacturer can provide a new update for its product.

First, Google has to develop and test new builds before manufacturers like Samsung can pick them up and customize the interface.

Additionally, the builds have to go through chip designers like Qualcomm because the update may require changes to the operating system kernel or other aspects of the chip's software architecture.

Since chip designers like Qualcomm are the only ones who can make such changes, OS upgrades are impossible without their cooperation.

Chip designers like Qualcomm can charge manufacturers more for longer software support periods because they know that Android phone manufacturers can't advertise OS updates for six or seven years unless they're sure Qualcomm will make the necessary changes.

Samsung has been leading the Android phone market in terms of software updates. It's clear that it's spent a lot of money to ensure that its recent high-end Android phones get seven OS updates; many of them run on Qualcomm processors.

Qualcomm has confirmed that the new Snapdragon 8 Elite – the processor that will be used throughout the Galaxy S25 series – will offer eight years of software updates. This means Samsung could update the Galaxy S25 series’ operating system for eight years if it wanted to.