GeneralVerdacht Seems like Pixel 5 received the November Patch - hopefully this trend will continue as long as Pixel 5a 5G will be supported until next year. We will see..
https://developers.google.com/android/drivers#redfinup1a.231105.001
ifman13 This is great news, although I'm afraid they have extended support 1 more month coinciding with the end of the Pixel 4a 5G update lifecycle. It would be great news if they extended it for these two until the end of the 5a 5G cycle.
As noted, the Pixel 5 has already received one update it wasn't supposed to get. The October patch was supposed to be the end of life for the Pixel 5. The GrapheneOS webpage about supported devices used to say (but no longer does, I don't know why) that it might be the case that the Pixel 5 and 4a5G will get an extra year of support, because they have identical internal hardware to the Pixel 5a, which will be supported until August 2024. The Pixel 5, 4a5G, and 5a are unsual phones in this regard. Google never made phones, across different model years, with identical internel components like this before or since. Because Google is supporting the chipset in the 5a anyway, it shouldn't be a big deal to continue to support the 5 and 4a5G (usually the lack of drivers from Qualcomm, for older chipsets, was the reason why phones got end-of-lifed). So it does seem something unusual may happen here. It seems like perhaps a promising sign that the 5 already has gotten an extra update. I think if the 5 and 4a5G get updated in December then maybe things will be looking good until Augut 2024. So I think it's at least worth waiting until one is sure these devices are no longer receiving regular updates, before deciding to ditch them.
That aside, I agree that it's disappointing that there are no longer truly small Pixel phones like the 5 and the Pixel 2 (my favorite design of the Pixel phones). I looked at the Pixel 8 today in the store. It's an okay size. I appreciate that it's smaller than other recent Pixels. But it is kind of thick (plus the absurd camera visor that makes the phone over 1 cm thick--its worth noting that Sony puts larger sensors in the Xperia phones, but does not require a giant camera hump or super thick phone). I feel like phones can be big or thick, but not both. I have a 4a5G right now and the thinness definitely helps to make up for the size. I don't know what Google's problem is, but other companies manage to cram just as many components into phones and don't sacrifice battery size, yet they still manage to make thinner phones.