Qualcomm and ASUS teamed up last year to bring the first Snapdragon smartphone to market. The model in question was released without a specific name, being just a “smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders designed by ASUS”. As described, this is intended to be a smartphone aimed at the brand’s Insiders community.
This being a model for enthusiasts, one would expect that at least security updates would be released regularly… but apparently this $1500 smartphone is not a priority for either Qualcomm or ASUS.
Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders has not received any new feature updates since March. But worse than that is the fact that, since January, it hasn't received any security updates.
This smartphone developed in partnership between ASUS and Qualcomm is framed in the top range, with a price that hits 1500 dollars and has been without these important updates for 6 months.
At launch, Qualcomm promised that the smartphone would receive "4 years of regular security updates", but the chipmaker is already six months behind schedule, having launched a year ago.
At launch, the smartphone will run stock Android 11 and Qualcomm will provide 4-years of regular security updates.
— Snapdragon (@Snapdragon) July 9, 2021
looking at the ASUS software page, you can see that Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders had a new software update approximately every month between August and January. The last update came in March, and while the changelog mentions “Android security patch updated”, there was no change in the security patch level, according to information shared on Reddit.
In addition to this problem, there is another one to highlight. The smartphone was announced a few months after the official launch of Android 12, so it came to the market with Android 11... and remains so until now, with no expectations that it will ever receive the latest version, which will soon will also be updated.
It is recalled that this model was launched as a mirror of the ASUS model the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate, which would be priced at €200 below this Qualcomm version and which has been duly updated.