Its not. I’m writing this on a Note 8 with Android 9. It can run 99% of Apps on the Playstore, has an up to date browser and even gets access to new features like Google Lens, Gemini or Quickshare. Would it be nice to have Android 14? Yes. Does it need Android 14? eh not really.
I don’t get why people who aren’t already running Ryzen 9s, i9s or 4090s are buying anything besides the cheapest option. On my last 3 builds I always sorted by price and picket the cheapest option for the CPU Socket, payed at most 70$ and never had any issues. If you need to get the last 5% of performance by overclocking I get it, but for anyone else this is a giant waste of money.