Honor matches Apple, Samsung, and Google with new update promise for its flagship phones – but how long is ‘too long’?
Honor has announced a commitment to providing seven years of Android OS and security updates to its latest Magic series devices, including the Honor Magic 7 Pro.
The move brings the burgeoning smartphone manufacturer in line with Apple, Samsung, and Google, all of which provide seven years of software and security updates to their respective flagship smartphones (Apple promises at least five years of updates, but the company regularly tends to previous-generation iPhones beyond that period).
Previously, Honor handsets were typically supported with five years of updates. The best honor phones from 2024 – namely the Honor Magic 6 Pro, Honor Magic V3, and Honor 200 Pro – will remain subject to this original commitment, with the recently released Magic 7 Pro becoming the first beneficiary of the company’s new stance.
“By guaranteeing long-term software and security updates, Honor provides Magic Series owners with the confidence that their devices will remain up-to-date, secure, and feature-rich – maximizing the value of their investment and extending the lifespan of the devices,” Honor said in statement accompanying the announcement, which was made at MWC 2025.
It’s clear, then, that the move is as much a display of Honor’s faith in the longevity of its smartphone hardware as it is a commitment to sustainability (it aligns the brand with the EU’s Circular Economy and Ecodesign regulations).
Do smartphones need seven years of updates?
The answer to that question has, I think, changed since Apple began offering seven years of updates to its iPhones (Google and Samsung started doing so more recently) – though I suspect that OnePlus would disagree.
In contrast to those brands (and now Honor), OnePlus has committed to offering four years of OS updates and six years of security patches to its latest flagship device, the OnePlus 13, with OnePlus COO Kinder Liu saying in a 2024 interview that longer update policies “miss the point” if the hardware they apply to becomes outdated. Sure, that reads like a self-own (i.e. an admission that OnePlus phones won’t last as long as rival models) but Liu’s point holds water for a certain generation of phones: a six-year-old iPhone XR, for instance, can technically run iOS 18, but that doesn’t mean it’ll do so smoothly.
Of course, an Honor Magic 7 Pro is not an iPhone XR; its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and 12GB RAM will undoubtedly give it longevity that phones from yesteryear simply don’t have. That said, I don’t think Honor is expecting anyone to actually hold on to the same phone for seven years – this is more a case of the company aligning itself with the big boys so it can’t be criticized for not doing so.
Still, the more updates, the merrier. Offering as-long-as-possible update support can only be a good thing for consumers, provided that the hardware in question can indeed live up to the billing in seven years’ time. Come back to us in 2032.
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Honor has announced a commitment to providing seven years of Android OS and security updates to its latest Magic series devices, including the Honor Magic 7 Pro. The move brings the burgeoning smartphone manufacturer in line with Apple, Samsung, and Google, all of which provide seven years of software and…
