Google recently updated the support page for its Nexus series of devices and interestingly enough, the company seems to have extended the guaranteed security update timeframe for two of its Nexus smartphones by an additional two months. Following these changes, both the Nexus 6P and 5X should now benefit from guaranteed security updates until the end of November 2018, whereas previously the company was only guaranteeing security updates until the month of September of next year.
Generally speaking, the Mountain View tech giant offers guaranteed security updates for Nexus smartphones for 3 years from the time they became available for purchase on the Google Play Store. In this particular case, the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X will turn three years old in September 2018, when support for security updates should have normally ended for both smartphones. But in recent news Google has extended this timeframe by an additional two months until November 2018 for unspecified reasons, however, it’s important to note that support for newer versions of Android OS will come to an end this month in September 2017. Fortunately, both smartphones currently run the latest version of Google’s mobile OS – Android 8.0 Oreo – which was officially rolled out earlier in August. Having said that, the duo will continue to enjoy a modern version of Android OS over the next year or so, and security features should remain up to date for an additional 14 months from the time of this writing.
Both the Nexus 5X and 6P were announced in September 2015 when they introduced Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the mobile world. Both devices have made the jump to Android 7.0 Nougat in 2016 and since then they have both received a couple of upgrades to updated OS versions, specifically Android 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 Nougat. The two smartphones at hand are the last to bear the Nexus moniker as Google’s newer devices have adopted the “Pixel” family name instead. The Nexus 6P was Huawei’s first take on a Nexus flagship device and Google’s first handset wrapped in metal, whereas the Nexus 5X was the third Google smartphone manufactured by LG, following the older Nexus 4 in the year 2012 and the Nexus 5 a year later.