Outdated Android security risk?

/e/OS Devices Samsung
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I’m on Samsung Galaxy S9+ and my /e/ os install runs android 8. I checked the settings and my Android security patches are out of date. Do I need to worry? Is there a security risk or did the /e/ team take care of that? Can I upgrade my phone to higher version of Android easily, or would it be a hastle? To be clear - I don’t care for the new UIs or features, I only care about security. I’d like to stay with the /e/ os if possible.

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What are the dates for the security patches applied and on what /e/ version you are on?

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Android Security Patch Level: May 5 2021
Android version: 8.1.0
LineageOS API Level: llama (9)

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If your phone is on Android 8, I guess you have a stable build. The latest build available here is e-0.17-o-20210531117530-stable-star2lte.zip. This indicates that it is /e/ version 0.17, Android version 8 (oreo), created on 30th May 2021. Android patch level ‘May 5 2021’ would be the latest available when the build was made. Newer patches will be included in the next e release (version 0.18).

You have two choices:

  1. Wait for the next /e/ stable build, which will get you the updates to the Android Security patches that are available when that build is created.
  2. Move to a devbuild (the latest is e-0.17-q-20210529117214-dev-star2lte.zip, which may have more up-to-date security patches as it was build more recently than the stable build, and is Android 10 (Q).

Your call! dev builds get updated more frequently than stable but they may be more buggy.

I hope that helps you decide

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Thanks, that’s a perfect answer. I think I’ll try my luck with the Dev build