Vivo is one of the first rising brands in the smartphone market. The Chinese company wants to improve its position in Kenya and has now announced an extended update guarantee. For three years, smartphones now get Android updates. However, this only applies from a certain point in time.
Unfortunately, Vivo is not as easy as Samsung and Google. While the competition also promises retroactive extended Android updates for older smartphones of three or four years, the Chinese manufacturer is taking a different path. All high-end X-Series smartphones that will be launched in July 2021 will be powered by Android updates for three years, according to the press release. Last year, Vivo launched the X51 in Kenya. The new update warranty does not apply to this smartphone. However, as Vivo wants to enter the market more and more in the future, the assurance of more updates will play a major role.
As we suspected when announcing Samsung’s update guarantee, this will have a positive impact on the competition. While OnePlus initially tried to reduce the updates, Vivo, as part of the BBK family, is taking exactly the opposite step. One can probably expect realme and Oppo to follow a similar path. People are using their phones longer and longer and a good update policy of more than two years should actually be taken for granted. Samsung understood exactly that early on and supplied its phones for four years – sometimes even longer, as you can see on the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S8.
Pressure Arises on other Brands
For end customers, the current development is very beneficial. Manufacturers who only provide their smartphones with updates for two years and then phase them out will have a significant disadvantage compared to the competition, which offers three or four years of updates. Perhaps then the manufacturers will be slowed down a bit, who throw countless very similar phones on to the market, but save on updates. One can only hope that other manufacturers will join in.
