While waiting for the Android 16 release, scheduled in the second quarter of 2025, Google has anticipated a narrow as regards the release to its users of updates to safety for the most dated versions of its operating system.
The Mountain View giant has in fact decided to cut out all those smartphones that can no longer upgrade to Android 13, alarm millions of users all over the world: devices equipped with Android 12 and 12L they will no longer receive any support. Instinctively it would be to think that it is now a limited number of people, yet, according to the data deduced from a market research made relatively recent by experts in the sector, in May 2024 on more than half of the Android devices, version 12 or even one of the previous ones was still installed.
The music changes, therefore, as regards the release of the monthly security patches: up to the version of March 2025, the changes were also made available to owners of electronic devices equipped with Android 12 and 12 l, while from April The support was interrupted abruptly and limited exclusively to cell phones with installed versions of Android from 13 upwards. This translates into a security problem for smartphones that will not be able to benefit from the update, since they will be more vulnerable to any cyberattacchi carried out with more modern and advanced IT systems. For its part, Galaxy had already stopped integrating Google security patches with its changes for systems equipped with Android 12, limiting its attention to the Galaxy models on which version 13 or subsequent to it are installed.
How can this security problem be remedied? The easiest way is obviously to buy a device on which it is possible to install more recent versions of the Google operating system, i.e. by Android 13 up. There are alternatives, such as “Custom rom“(Personalized Roma), modified versions of the Android operating system made by external developers generally used precisely to give new lifeblood to old smartphones or to personalize the user’s experience and make it safe against cyberattacchi
The last chance is to continue using the smartphone with Android 12 or 12L even without safety updates, but this is the most risky solution, given the high vulnerability of the operating system.