Vivo guarantees 7 years of updates for iQOO 15 as cheap flagship gets longer software support

Vivo’s sub-brand iQOO is not available in the US and quite a few other Western markets, but with products like the iQOO 15, the company offers some pretty compelling phones with strong price-performance ratio that can be imported from China. Among other things, the iQOO 15 sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, an AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 6,000 nits and a 7,000mAh battery for prices starting around €600. That makes the iQOO 15 one of the most affordable smartphones powered by the fastest Snapdragon chip that’s currently available.

Until the iQOO 11, Vivo guaranteed only three major Android updates and four years of security patches for its flagships phones. With the launch of the iQOO 12, that update promise was improved to four Android updates and five years of security patches. As Vivo has now confirmed to SmartPrix, software support will be extended once again with the release of the iQOO 15, which is scheduled to receive a total of five major Android updates as well as seven years of security patches. This puts Vivo almost on par with its best competitors, even though the Google Pixel 10 (from $779 on Amazon) is expected to receive operating system updates and security patches for seven years, including new features.

Vivo apparently tries to improve its customer satisfaction. The company recently confirmed that both the iQOO Neo 7 and iQOO Neo 7 Pro will receive the Origin OS 6 update, although these phones were originally expected to remain on the older Funtouch OS 15. Whether this improved software update policy is part of a broader plan to expand to more global markets remains to be seen, but since the Vivo X300 Pro launched in Europe shortly after its debut in China, it’s clear that Vivo is putting more effort into the European market than before.