This country wants smartphone makers to offer 7 years of security updates – Times of India

While deciding which smartphone you should buy, both hardware and software play a key role in making a smartphone worthy to be your next purchase. All smartphone OEMs are working super hard to deliver top-notch specs making the competition more fierce by the day, however, software is one front where you see a major variation with brands.
Now, Germany has proposed that brands should offer security updates for seven years. According to a report by Heise, the country also wants brands to make available spare parts of phones “at a reasonable price” for the same time period. As of now, the European Union (EU) is thinking of requiring five years of security updates for smartphones, but Germany’s federal government recently submitted a request to create a seven-year mandatory period. The EU’s proposal is expected to come into effect by 2023 and is aimed to be an environmentally friendly move.
The report by Heise adds that the digital Europe industry association, which represents phone manufacturers, wants this mandate to be reduced to security updates for three years and function updates for two years.
While most smartphone brands offer regular software updates for 2 to three years, Apple ends up rolling out updates for its older devices too when anything essential needs fixing.
Back in June, Apple rolled out a software update for older iPhones and iPads with fixes for vulnerabilities that affected memory corruption and WebKit. This update was made available for the iPad Air, the iPad mini 2, and iPad mini 3, as well as the 6th gen iPod touch, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus. “This update provides important security updates and is recommended for all users,” Apple says in the release notes for iOS 12.5.4 update. Prior to that, in May only, Apple had rolled out the iOS 12.5.3 update.