There has been a lot of press today covering Android P and the first developer preview dropping. That is certainly news worthy because, honestly, it came a week or two earlier than expected. But what is not news is the fact that the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P and Pixel C tablet will not be getting Android P, officially at least. Google has made it very clear and very public when support for these devices would end, both in major releases and security updates.
While we can debate all day long if two years of software support is too short, it is the number that Google settled on and has published for support of devices. The only exception, and likely the way going forward, is the Pixel 2 lineup which gets three years of major updates. For the Nexus 5X and 6P, major build support ended in September 2017. That means Android Oreo was the last major build.
Both of the devices will security updates and have phone support through November 2018 but after that, support completely ends.
Keep in mind that the 5X and 6P both shipped with Android Marshmallow in 2015. They received the Nougat update in 2016 and the Oreo update in 2017. That’s two major updates for these devices so it is the end of the road.
That doesn’t mean that Android P won’t be available for these devices. The teams at Lineage OS or Paranoid Android could well develop releases for them at some point in the future. But from Google’s perspective, there will be no more major updates.
By-the-by, for us Google Pixel and Pixel XL owners, Android P is going to be the last major release for those devices.
