Unless you own an iPhone, smartphones these days simply do not receive the software update support that people would like to see. It’s rare enough to see a smartphone OEM support all of their released devices with major updates for 2 years, and it’s even more rare to see them push out monthly security updates. Many had hoped that Microsoft would have handled their smartphone software differently, but that hasn’t seemed to be the case.
Most PC owners use Windows as their OS of choice and Microsoft has shown they’ll support this for years and years. For example, Windows 7 was released to the general public on October 22nd 2009 and the company supported it with bug fixes and security updates all the way up until January 13th 2015. When you see a company support software like this, some potential customers were likely to expect similar software support when they bought one of their smartphones.
We’ve seen complaints that Android devices these days do not get supported with major version updates for longer than 2 years. Google is attempting resolve this with Android O’s Treble feature, but we’ll have to wait and see how things pan out before we know if it’s successful or not. Google has started updating their smartphones with security updates for 3 years and it looks like that is something Microsoft agrees with for Windows Phone 8.1.
July 11 2017 was the last day that Microsoft said they would support Windows Phone 8.1 devices with software updates. If your phone is running that software, you should not expect it to receive any additional security updates from here on out. If possible, you’ll want to update it to Windows 10 Mobile if you would like your phone to be secured with the latest security updates and bug fixes.
Do you own a Windows Phone 8.1 device? Let us know your thoughts on Microsoft’s decision to cease updates after a little more than 3 years.
Source: Microsoft
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