If you're still rocking the Galaxy A52 in 2024, you've extracted almost every ounce of value out of Samsung's mid-range phone, and you deserve some recognition for pushing the company's firmware support claims this close to the limit. But a limit you will hit sooner than later.
Even if you're still happy with how the Galaxy A52 performs after all this time, you will eventually have to leave it behind for safety reasons, if not anything else. When? Well, you don't have a lot more time left.
Nowadays, Galaxy device users, ourselves included, often talk about how Samsung offers the best firmware support in the game. But it hasn't always been like this, and unfortunately, your Galaxy A52 belongs to a bygone era.
You can safely use your Galaxy A52 for one more year
The Galaxy A52 was among the last devices to guarantee support for three major OS upgrades and four years of security patches. A year after the A52 was released, Samsung improved its policy to include four OS updates and five years of security updates.
And now, for select phones, we're looking at an impressive seven OS upgrades and eight years of security updates.
Why are security patches important?
No device or system is entirely safe from malicious attacks, but regular security patches prevent devices from becoming huge security risks for their users. Unfortunately, companies can't support devices indefinitely.
The Galaxy A52 already received its last major OS upgrade with Android 14. It won't receive another. And relatively speaking, your Galaxy A52 is guaranteed to be safeguarded by Samsung security patches for one more year until around March 2025.
After that, Samsung may still issue critical security updates to your Galaxy A52 in extreme cases — see this case when Samsung updated hundreds of millions of old phones for security reasons. But aside from unusual events that may or may not happen, your Galaxy A52 will no longer get new security patches on a schedule starting early next year
Relatively speaking, that will be the moment when your device will become unsafe. You can still use it, but it may become more vulnerable to malicious attacks than before. And that's when you may want to switch to a new phone, even if performance or battery life won't be an issue for you.
