incorrect end-of-life date for Pixel 5, should be November not October

[thestinger]

Link to product page on endoflife.date

https://endoflife.date/pixel

Details of incorrect and correct details you have found

For example, the active support date on endoflife.date is not the same as in the product documentation.

endoflife.date: 2023-10-14

Product documentation: 2023-12-11

The Pixel 5 received the November update, and there was no other update in November, so the end-of-life really begins after the first release they missed which was Android 14 QPR1 on December 11th. This is currently handled incorrectly for other Pixels, but this one is 2 months off instead of 1 month off like the others.

What is the source website for the product and for its version information?

https://developers.google.com/android/images#redfin

Additional context

Pixel 5 received the full November monthly release. The 3 year policy for Pixels is a minimum guarantee and devices can receive updates past that point, although they usually don't receive more than one or two months of extra support.

They sometimes also provide incomplete updates for end-of-life devices, but they haven't (yet) done that for the Pixel 4a (5G) or Pixel 5, and I don't think those incomplete releases should be included in the data. The November release was for the Pixel 5 was the full monthly release though. They really could have provided the monthly/quarterly releases until the Pixel 5a end-of-life for the Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 but didn't bother.

I'd also suggest updating all the Pixels to their actual end-of-life date, i.e. the date of the first release they missed. The date when their update guarantee ends is not their end-of-life date, since they haven't missed an update for at least another month and sometimes get extra support, but rarely and not much.

[welcome[bot]]

Thank you for opening your first issue here :+1:. Be sure to follow the issue template if you chose one.

[marcwrobel]

Thanks a lot for raising this issue @thestinger.

You said:

They sometimes also provide incomplete updates for end-of-life devices.

I am not familiar with Android release policy, is there a simple way to know whether updates on https://developers.google.com/android/images are incomplete or not ?

[thestinger]

https://source.android.com/docs/setup/about/build-numbers shows the security patch level. That page gets updated a while after releases are published though.

UP1A.231105.001 was the last Pixel 5 release and has patch level 2023-11-05. It wasn't really truly end-of-life until it missed an update which happened in December.

Android has monthly, quarterly and yearly releases. December was the first quarterly release of Android 14 (QPR1). January will be the first monthly release of Android 14 QPR1. Only the version gets releases. A subset of the security patches are backported to older releases, currently Android 11, 12, 13 and 14. Up to this point, Pixels have always received the full monthly, quarterly and yearly updates until they're end-of-life and stop receiving security patches. In some cases, they've made special additional releases a couple months after end-of-life with some final fixes, without updating to a newer monthly/quarterly/yearly release or increasing the security patch level since not all security patches have been provided in those, just a subset. Pixel 5 hasn't gotten one of these special releases yet, but they might do that for the Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5. It won't change that the end-of-life for both was December onwards though.

[marcwrobel]

Thanks for the clarification. I used the latest build date from https://source.android.com/docs/setup/about/build-numbers as the EOL dates after all. I understand it's not the most ideal source (e.g. it's not updated as fast as https://developers.google.com/android/images and it's one month behind what could be considered as the real date), but it is simpler for maintenance (simpler to read, with exact dates) and closely enough to reality IMO. WDYT of this PR : #4421 ?

[thestinger]

It's definitely an improvement. I think it's debatable when the actual end-of-life. We used to say it was the day after their last update but we couldn't say that until after confirming they missed the next update so we switched to saying it was when they missed their first update, since until then they did get the same support as non-EOL ones.

[thestinger]

Also worth noting that up until this point, there has been no such thing as an LTS release for the stock Pixel OS and the corresponding Android Open Source Project. There have only been the monthly, quarterly and yearly updates as long as the monthly security patches have existed, and separate standalone backports of patches to ~3 years of previous releases which are not an OS release and are for non-Pixel OEMs to use if they don't update to the latest monthly/quarterly/yearly. It definitely makes sense to only have 1 column for end-of-life.

They did say that the 6th/7th generation Pixels are guaranteed to get major OS updates for at least 3 years and overall updates including security for at least 5, but they've never stopped major OS updates early. If I recall correctly, Nexus phones began having 2 year minimum OS updates and 3 year minimum security updates but did 3 for both, which is what we expect for 6th/7th gen Pixels. It's harder for them to keep providing security patches without doing major OS updates since at the moment no LTS releases based on older Android exist, only standalone security patches, which do not always apply cleanly to the latest monthly/quarterly release.

[thestinger]

Also, since they moved to a 7 year minimum guarantee for Pixel 8 / 8 Pro for both major OS updates and security updates, that's a further indication that they decided it makes no sense to do security and other updates without major OS updates. It would be a lot harder. Pixel 6 and 7 are also nearly the same hardware, and Pixel 8 is still fairly similar despite a major CPU update. I don't think they'll do more than 5 years for Pixel 6 or 7, but it would be incredibly weird if they created an LTS branch of an older Android release to avoid shipping major updates for them.