Motorola’s latest phone gets five major Android updates – you know, eventually

Ben Schoon | Sep 10 2024 - 1:10 pm PT

Motorola is preparing to launch the Edge 50 Neo in India and, ahead of its full debut, the company has announced that this will be its first smartphone to get five major Android updates, but there’s an obvious question with that.

The Motorola Edge 50 Neo has already launched in Europe, as Android Authority points out, and packs a MediaTek Dimensity 7300, 8GB or 12GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a pretty solid camera setup headlined by one of Sony’s LYTIA sensors. But ahead of the phone’s launch in India, another new detail has come out.

On Flipkart, a teaser page for the Motorola Edge 50 Neo prominently says that the device is going to get five major Android OS upgrades and five years of security updates on top of the device running Android 14 out of the box.

That’s well beyond Motorola’s usual update commitment, which even on the 2024 Razr foldables are only promised three years of major Android updates and four years of security updates. But it also comes with a big question on the cadence of these updates, as Motorola’s track record is… not good. It took over a year, and the release of sequels, for 2023’s Motorola Razr+ to finally get its Android 14 update.

So this new five-year promise is worth taking with a grain of salt, as those updates could really come at any time. Motorola says this is “5 years of assured software upgrades,” though, so it stands to reason that the company is promising that those five Android OS updates will come within five years of launch.

It’s also unclear for now when, if at all, a similar update policy will extend to other Motorola devices released in the rest of the world. It does apply to the Edge 50 Neo in Europe, as detailed on Motorola’s website.