However, as we started to look into the announcement it is not what the pair was saying. Nothing is changing really.  

Currently, Google and Samsung both offer three major OS updates on their well-known smartphones. Today's announcement from Google and Qualcomm does change that.

Instead, the announcement merely makes policy what has long been an optional extra for smartphone OEMs who work with Qualcomm and does not actually "extend" the lifespan of Qualcomm's highest-end chipsets in a meaningful way.

What is actually changing is  Qualcomm will support three major Android OS updates for its entire portfolio of smartphone chips starting with the Snapdragon 888

Smartphone OEMs will likely be able to now offer four full years of Android security updates in the future.

So the "four years" and "four Android OS versions" business which was announced was a marketing way of expressing what was already the policy for Google's Pixel and most of Samsung's. So nothing to see here, move on please.

Google's Pixel phones get three years of Android OS and security updates from the time they are released. That means around 36 months of security patches and three major platform updates.

Under the new system from Qualcomm, that could be extended to 48 months of security patches, but it would still be just three major platform updates.

Neither Google nor Qualcomm is promising more major platform updates for high-end Android smartphones, they're only saying that all Android smartphones with Qualcomm's chips from the newly announced Snapdragon 888 will be eligible for three major platform updates and, as far as we can tell, four years of security updates.

Google's slide from today's announcement says that your phone will, over its lifetime, run four versions of Android: the one it came with, and three subsequent platform updates.