The promise of “this many years of Android” stopped being a guarantee. Sony wrote on its own support page: the Xperia 10 VI will not get Android 17. It was three major versions; it will be two. The wording is careful: because of storage limits the company “does not consider the upgrade experience adequate”.
What the owner still gets
Sony says it will keep the four years of security patches. Other models, it says, are unaffected. For someone who bought a mid-range Xperia specifically for the third big update, that is still a change of terms after purchase. Google and Samsung have not done this on fresh lines yet — not because the hardware is immortal, but because the promise has not hit a wall.
If 17 really slams into the partition and leaves the phone half-alive, refusing is more honest than shipping a half-broken build. Honesty does not cancel the fact that marketing already sold “three versions”.
Why this matters beyond Xperia
Flagships now promise seven years. Galaxy S26 Ultra is supposed to reach Android 23. Seven years is a change of modems, partitions, RAM requirements and corporate will. The 10 VI story is a precedent: a promise can be narrowed by citing “experience”. The longer the term, the higher the chance that in five years lawyers and engineers find a similar phrase.
How to look at it
Buying a phone for an update table only makes sense from vendors who already finished those terms, not ones who drew them on a slide. For a current 10 VI the exit is to take what is still coming and not wait for 17 “in case they change their minds”. For the market — read a promise as a target, not a contract, until a regulator forces the word to be kept.
