I also have OP7Pro (what an amazing phone btw), and yes, we're pretty much sufficiently out of date that they still work - a wild but true reality we find ourselves in.
I mean my Messages app. I installed it years ago and never updated, because why would I ever updated an SMS app, the only thing that can ever happen is for things to break that used to be working, lol. I don't even know if I run A12.
I do know, though, that the OP7Pro is one of the last Android devices that are whitelisted by Google to pass SafetyNet without hardware-backed attestation. Shame that TWRP wiped my working setup. I've been trying to get them to add any basic protection against that for over three years: https://github.com/TeamWin/Team-Win-Recovery-Project/issues/...
It is an amazing phone. Notchless, relockable bootloader (not just unlockable, but custom AVB key support!!), in-screen fingerprint sensor, 90Hz AMOLED, and great build quality.
> because why would I ever updated an SMS app, the only thing that can ever happen is for things to break that used to be working, lol.
Text parsing/rendering is a security Achilles' heel, and SMS app vulnerabilities are commonly exploited entry points for persistent malware from the likes of NSO. All things being equal, should update SMS apps for the security updates.
Text parsing and rendering is supposed to be done by the OS. And if there's an OS-level vulnerability like that, then the OS is what you update, not necessarily just the app.
