Honor suddenly adds Samsung-rivalling upgrade that'll last for years

Nobody wants to be part of an arms race, but when it comes to the Android phone market, there's been one going on regardless. It's not quite as attention-grabbing or headline-making as camera lenses or fancy new displays, but security and software updates are quite a big business.

Now, Honor has announced at MWC that it's going to be joining the 'best-in-class' level of promised software updates for its Magic phones moving forward. Starting with the Honor Magic 7 Pro, all of its Magic handsets will get a minimum of seven years of guaranteed updates, which is a pretty excellent offering.

In the last few years, this has been the sort of pledge that has gone from extremely rare to much more common among the best phones on the market. In particular, the likes of Samsung and Google have been leading the charge, with lengthy promises around each of their Galaxy and Pixel phone lineups.

Honor's seven-year pledge puts it right into that same bracket, and ensures that people won't have to worry about shiny new Android features that don't actually make it to their phone, even when it's still fairly new. Perhaps even more crucially (but more subtle) is the fact that security updates will continue for that same period.

We're in an era when hackers and phishing scams are more prevalent than ever, so knowing that you're protected from many of these is a real slice of peace-of-mind. It's the sort of pledge we'd like to see from practically every phonemaker, frankly.

Honor's also announcing a shift in its apparent strategy, which it's dubbing the Honor Alpha Plan. This essentially aims to shift it from being viewed as a phonemaker into a new identity as a "global leading AI device ecosystem company", which does sound more than a little buzzwordy. Still, it's backed up by new AI features coming to its phones, including some really interesting ones like a deepfake detection tool to help people avoid being misled photographically.

Whether it can stick the landing on that change of direction will probably take a decent while to come out in the wash, but the announcement about Android OS and security updates is far more immediate, and undeniably impressive when it comes to vying for new customers.