Samsung phone upgrade

 Traditionally my phones are "cast offs".  When Annette buys her new phone she passes the old one on ("down"?) to me.  My requirements and expectations from a phone are limited and any model from the past few years will suit me.  I don't actually move over to a new "cast off" as soon as it arrives, I wait until the old phone fails or irritates me.

I have been using a Samsung S7 Edge since September 2021 and after repeated droppings screen cracks are becoming larger.  However, the reason I needed to "upgrade" is because the phone is too old for an app I wanted to install.  The next available "cast off" is a Samsung S9+ which runs the software fine.  

Android software

Wikipedia provides release and support dates.

The S7 runs Android 8.0 which was released in August 2017 and last updated in January 2021.
The S9+ runs Android 10.0 which was released in September 2019 and last updated in February 2023.  

The diagram above shows that Android OS is only supported for 3.5 years and Android 10 is now out of support.  You cant upgrade the phone Android version unless you jailbreak the phone.

So both the S7 and S9+ phones have been running unsupported software for a while.  A significant proportion of people use older phones with unsupported software and it doesn't seem to be a major issue.
For example using mobile banking apps and mobile "wallets" is commonplace and they are not restricted to supported / patched devices so the risk must be small.  Advice appears to be that you should only install software from play store and take care with the sites you visit.

My approach will be to continue to use software whilst apps are available and the phone continues to work.

Upgrade Process

It can be quite a traumatic process moving to a new phone and it is pleasing to see that Samsung have made the process as easy as possible.

Step 1.  I backed up the old phone and transferred SIM and SD cards to the new phone.

Step 2.  Start the Smart Switch app on both devices which will transfer all data from one to the other.

Step 3.  Smart Switch told me I had to backup Whatsapp messages separately (as they are encrypted).

Step 4. I then completed the Smart Switch OS transfer, setup a PIN / fingerprint and signed on.

Step 5.  All the installed apps were copied across (it took about 20 minutes).

Step 6.  At this stage all the apps and icons appeared to be available and I could use the internet.

Step 7. I restored whatsapp separately.

Step 8. For security reasons you need to re-register lastpass, bank, credit card apps and re-add wallet.

Conclusion

I was impressed by how painless the upgrade process was.  Of course, it needs to work otherwise people would not upgrade their devices every couple of years.

I was now able to install the new app, which ironically is needed to communicate with our new car, an electric mini.  The app is needed so you can check whether the cars battery is charging, warm the car up before you get in and other indispensible present day necessities.