Upcoming change to supported balena device types

Product support
1

Hi there,

We are planning to discontinue support for certain device types, and your organization currently has one or more active devices on that list.

Your existing devices will continue to operate as they do today. However, no new balenaOS releases will be published for these device types, and they will no longer appear in the dashboard when creating new fleets. Devices of a discontinued type can still be added to existing fleets, but over time, discontinued devices will fall behind the minimum supported balenaOS and balenaCloud versions. This can eventually impact compatibility and access to new platform features.

The discontinuation date for this batch is March 1, 2026. You can continue using your existing devices, or begin planning a migration to a currently supported device type. Our team can help you identify a path that best fits your deployment, please reach out through existing support channels or directly at solutions@balena.io.

You can review the full discontinuation details, including the specific device types affected and the criteria behind these decisions, by clicking here.

Thanks,

– The balena Team

What does this actually mean, we have quite some devices in the field which are based on Jetson Nano. Either using the default SD/eMMC device type or Photon Nano and Xavier NX. We will definitely not replace these devices for the years to come.

2

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out.

What this means, is that we won’t be publishing new versions of balenaOS for these device types. They will continue to work as they have been, but there will be no future opportunities to update the hostOS beyond whatever the current latest version is.

The implications of releasing no further OS versions are that new OS features and fixes will not be available. There is also an eventual risk, that the minimum version of balenaOS that works with balena cloud will eventually be higher than an OS version that is available for that device type.

3

Hello,

That’s interesting. We are starting to use Balena and so far it has been great.

But when you deploy devices in the field with an OS like BalenaOS, you need to have visibility in terms of support discontinuation to manage your fleet properly.

Do you have the dates on which you plan to discontinue support for the currently supported devices ?

Example, when are you going to discontinue the support for the CM4 ?