The answer seems obvious, of course, and I’ve been in IT for 20+ years so I’m not clueless. OTOH, don’t know much about phone tech anymore.
I almost never use the phone for browsing or email, mainly texting, calling, pictures and navigation. So what are my threat vectors? If I’m not on the web or downloading sketchy apps, what risks am I looking at?
I ask because I just got an old Pixel 4a and was wondering how long I’ll get updates.
EDIT: I should add that I don’t connect to any wireless but my own.
Occasionally you’ll hear about an unauthenticated race that only takes receiving a text.
All vulnerability services consider end of support to be a critical vulnerability.
My wife has the 4a. She’s happy with it. I love how it fits in my hand.
But, I’ve been pushing her to upgrade because it’s been out of security updates for over a year.
On a mobile device, the risk is rather low. Most hackers go for commonly used operating systems and spray their attacks at millions of machines. If you’re practicing good security hygiene, you should be fine, even though I’m a strong advocate for security updates. Updating is obviously better than not updating. So if budget isn’t an issue I’d say upgrade the device. 4a doesn’t get updates anymore.