Android has been supporting the useful ability to install system updates in the background for years, and only needs a quick reload to apply the changes. As monthly updates become the norm, it is an excellent quality of life improvement. However, Samsung has been keeping the feature going for years and is not changing it, as the Galaxy S21 series still does not support seamless updates.
Seamless updates use A / B partitions to install an update in the background while still using your phone. This has a number of advantages, such as a lower risk of corrupt data during an update, but also the fact that your phone is not out of order for a better 20 minutes.
It was generally accepted that Google would need support for this update method with Android 11, as some leaked documents were apparently proven, but apparently Google stepped back about that decision in the time since.
That is, Samsung’s Galaxy S21, S21 + and S21 Ultra do not yet have support for the five-year-old seamless update feature. Samsung Enemy Max Weinbach commented on Twitter that he could not find any talk of A / B updates in a system image from a Galaxy S21 device. If we look at two apps, Treble Info and Treble Check, the story is the same there, seamless updates are marked as lack of support. However, the results should be taken with a grain of salt, as the app also reports that Treble is not supported, something that was not true for years according to any Google requirements of any common Android device. These programs are probably just reporting incorrectly on these devices or it may increase somewhat with Samsung’s current software build. In any case, there is little chance that these phones do not support Treble.
Why does Samsung not support the feature? The company did not officially mention anything, although we did want to reach a statement, but in the past, the reasoning was around storage. A / B updates cost about 3 GB at the expense of some of the memory on board. In a year where the microSD card slot was taken away, I assume it is not the worst excuse.
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