Explanation on why Xiaomi PAD 6 won't receive Android 15 along with HyperOS 2.0
As many of you heard, the Xiaomi Pad 6 won't receive Android 15 alongside HyperOS 2.0.
Xiaomi Pad 6 will not receive Android 15 update - XiaomiTime - confirmed on xiaomitime.com
Xiaomi Pad 6 privée d'Android 15 ? La raison va vous surprendre ! - confirmed on french website menow.fr
It all boils down to Qualcomm dropping support for the Snapdragon 870 and Xiaomi unwilling to adapt the PAD 6 to Android 15.
I've done some digging on the Xiaomi Insiders discord and I found out the problem comes from the Vendor Image used on the Snapdragon 870.
The Pad 6 uses Android 11 Vendor and Google recommends OEMs to update their devices to at most Android N+3 (no longer a requirement on recent CPUs, e.g the Snapdragon 8 Elite can go up to N+7). Since Android 15 (Android 14 was the latest version of Android recommended for Android 11 Vendor) is out of range for the Xiaomi Pad 6 Vendor, Xiaomi can't update the Pad 6 to Android 15 as it is without updating the Vendor Image.
Xiaomi can in theory try to update the Vendor Image to a newer version of Android, but they won't.
I also heard Qualcomm can offer extended support to some of their more popular and older SOCs, but I haven't heard anything regarding the S870 getting extended support.
It's a shame because the Pad 6 meets all the requirements for Android 15 except for the Vendor Image.