{"id":211446,"date":"2026-02-08T22:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/08\/over-a-billion-android-phones-left-exposed-as-google-ends-security-updates-for-older-versions\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T00:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T05:25:11","slug":"over-a-billion-android-phones-left-exposed-as-google-ends-security-updates-for-older-versions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/08\/over-a-billion-android-phones-left-exposed-as-google-ends-security-updates-for-older-versions\/","title":{"rendered":"Over a billion Android phones left exposed as Google ends security updates for older versions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over a billion Android phones left exposed as Google ends security updates for older versions<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.storyboard18.com\/digital\/over-a-billion-android-phones-left-exposed-as-google-ends-security-updates-for-older-versions-89097.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-08 22:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.storyboard18.com<\/a><\/p>\n

More than one billion Android smartphones worldwide are now exposed to heightened cybersecurity risks after Google confirmed that devices running Android 12 or older no longer receive security patches, according to Android distribution data cited by Moneycontrol.<\/p>\n

The move has left an estimated 42.1 per cent of Android devices vulnerable to new malware and spyware threats. Latest platform distribution figures show that only 57.9 per cent of Android phones are running Android 13 or newer, meaning everything below that threshold is no longer protected by system-level security updates.<\/p>\n

Phones launched in 2021 or earlier are among the most affected, and the situation has seen little improvement over the past year. As a result, roughly one billion Android users remain on unsupported software versions, effectively frozen from a security standpoint.<\/p>\n

Industry observers have long pointed to Android\u2019s fragmentation problem as the root cause. While Google develops the Android operating system, it does not control update schedules for most manufacturers outside its Pixel lineup. Companies such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Motorola manage their own software timelines and often stop supporting devices after just a few years.<\/p>\n

This stands in contrast to Apple\u2019s vertically integrated approach, which allows it to push operating system and security updates to older iPhones more consistently.<\/p>\n

The data highlights how limited adoption of the latest Android versions remains. Only 7.5 per cent of Android phones currently run Android 16, while 19.3 per cent are on Android 15, 17.2 per cent on Android 14 and 13.9 per cent on Android 13. Devices still receiving security updates account for just over half the Android ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Android versions that no longer receive security patches include Android 12 at 11.4 per cent, Android 11 at 13.7 per cent, Android 10 at 7.8 per cent, Android 9 at 4.5 per cent and Android 8 at 2.3 per cent. In total, more than four in every ten…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over a billion Android phones left exposed as Google ends security updates for older versions…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":211447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.storyboard18.com\/storyboard18\/2025\/12\/RESIZE-2-PB-2025-12-05T140120.472-2025-12-c9dc533625d99fe8e83c942b7fdef1f1-1019x573.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,32,116,158,72,86,57,61,117,118],"class_list":["post-211446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-malware","tag-motorola","tag-oppo","tag-pixel","tag-samsung","tag-security","tag-security-updates","tag-vivo","tag-xiaomi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211446"}],"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=211446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":211448,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211446\/revisions\/211448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}