Google has seemingly ended support for 2015’s Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X. The company did not push January 2019’s Android security patch to the duo of smartphones.
This shouldn’t comes as a surprise: Google only promises three years of security updates for its devices, meaning from November onward there hasn’t been any guarantee of the company continuing to issue security updates for the Nexus 6P and 5X. Google did push December’s update to the Nexus 6P and 5X, which extended their life cycle one extra month.
It’s possible Google has simply delayed the update for these handsets, though that seems unlikely.
The death of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P marks the end of an era.
The Nexus brand was Google’s original phone brand. Google collaborated with companies like LG, Samsung and HTC to provide users with a pure Android experience, even though the phones themselves weren’t completely designed by the search company itself.
Google hasn’t released a new Nexus-branded device since 2015.
In 2016, the company moved onto the Pixel brand. While some Pixel handsets have been manufactured by HTC and LG, the phones are designed and marketed by Google. On Pixel branded devices, there is no mention of any brand other than Google’s on the chassis, and are marketed as the pure Google experience, inside and out.
The Nexus 5X and 6P stopped receiving Android updates in 2017, and both devices are still on Android 8.1 Oreo.
We’ve reached out to Google to verify that these handsets have officially reached the end of their life cycle.
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