{"id":210879,"date":"2026-02-07T00:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/07\/google-says-1-billion-android-users-need-to-buy-a-new-phone-now\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T01:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T06:50:08","slug":"google-says-1-billion-android-users-need-to-buy-a-new-phone-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/07\/google-says-1-billion-android-users-need-to-buy-a-new-phone-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Google says 1 billion Android users need to buy a new phone now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.phonearena.com\/news\/1-billion-android-users-have-phone-vulnerable-to-attack_id178028\">Google says 1 billion Android users need to buy a new phone now<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.phonearena.com\/news\/1-billion-android-users-have-phone-vulnerable-to-attack_id178028\">https:\/\/www.phonearena.com\/news\/1-billion-android-users-have-phone-vulnerable-to-attack_id178028<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-07 00:34:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.phonearena.com\">www.phonearena.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                                                                According to information from Google, an incredible 40% of all Android phones are vulnerable to new malware and spyware attacks. And here is the thing. If your <span>Android phone<\/span> is in the 40% that are not protected from attack, you need to upgrade to a new <span>Android phone<\/span> now. I will tell you how you can tell if your <span>Android phone<\/span> is vulnerable and how Android found itself in this situation.<\/p>\n<h2>42.1% of Android devices no longer have support for security updates<\/h2>\n<p>Part of the problem is that Google no longer issues security patches to phones running Android 12 or older. That means that phones released in 2021 and before are not protected from the latest malicious malware attacks. Unfortunately, that all stems from the latest Android distribution numbers which show that only 57.9% of Android handsets are running Android 13 and later. So, more precisely, 42.1% of Android phones are vulnerable to an attack.<\/p>\n<p>                    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/m-cdn.phonearena.com\/images\/articles\/442450-image\/diss.webp\" alt=\"Android distribution numbers from December 2025.\"\/>                                <\/p>\n<p>Latest Android distribution figures from December 2025. | Image credit-9to5Google<\/p>\n<p>    We first told you about the seriousness of this back in late December. Back then, it was estimated that 1 billion Android users were left in a compromising position and that figure is the same today. Part of the problem, as it always is for Android, is the fragmentation that happens with the platform when it comes to Android updates. Unlike iOS, which is developed by the same company that makes all of the phones it runs on, Google develops Android and outside of the Pixel line, many different companies make <span>Android phones<\/span>. That makes it nearly impossible to have a coordinated Android OS update.<\/p>\n<h2>Only 7.5% of Android devices are powered by the latest Android build<\/h2>\n<p>Because of this fragmentation, as we told you last month, a ridiculously low percentage of Android users have the latest build of Android running on their phones; as of&#8230;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.phonearena.com\/news\/1-billion-android-users-have-phone-vulnerable-to-attack_id178028\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google says 1 billion Android users need to buy a new phone now https:\/\/www.phonearena.com\/news\/1-billion-android-users-have-phone-vulnerable-to-attack_id178028 Publish&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":210880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/m-cdn.phonearena.com\/images\/article\/178028-wide-two_1200\/Google-says-1-billion-Android-users-need-to-buy-a-new-phone-now.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,32,72,57,61],"class_list":["post-210879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-malware","tag-pixel","tag-security","tag-security-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210881,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210879\/revisions\/210881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}