Ron Amadeo
Samsung is paying more attention to Android updates and offering four years of security updates on many of its Android devices. The company’s complete update package is now three years of major OS updates and four years of security updates, offering even the best of Google on the Pixel line.
In the announcement, Samsung says: ‘Samsung has made significant progress over the past decade in streamlining and accelerating its regular security updates. Samsung has worked closely with its operating system and chipset partners, as well as more than 200 service providers around the world, to ensure billions of Galaxy devices receive timely security solutions. ‘Samsung has been experimenting with bringing four years of updates to its own Exynos SoC devices, but now it looks like the company is also getting Qualcomm models on board.
Keep in mind that this is not necessarily monthly security updates. Samsung says it delivers four years of “monthly or quarterly” updates, depending on the age of the device. Samsung’s current security bulletin page contains the Galaxy S9 (2018) on the monthly update plan, while the Galaxy S8 is on the quarterly plan. So it sounds like three years of monthly security updates and another year of quarterly updates.
What the phones get four years of security updates is the answer ‘a lot’. These are not just flagships; a bunch of mid-range devices and tablets dating back to 2019 have been included, providing ‘more than 130 models’. Here is the complete list.
- Galaxy foldable devices: fold, fold 5G, Z fold 2, Z fold 2 5G, Z Flip, Z Flip 5G
- Galaxy S Series: S10, S10 +, S10e, S10 5G, S10 Lite, S20, S20 5G, S20 +, S20 + 5G, S20 Ultra, S20 Ultra 5G, S20 FE, S20 FE 5G, S21 5G, S21 + 5G , S21 Ultra 5G
- Galaxy Note Series: Note10, Note10 5G, Note10 +, Note10 + 5G, Note10 Lite, Note20, Note20 5G, Note20 Ultra, Note20 Ultra 5G
- Galaxy A Series: A10, A10e, A10s, A20, A20s, A30, A30s, A40, A50, A50s, A60, A70, A70s, A80, A90 5G, A11, A21, A21s, A31, A41, A51, A51 5G , A71, A71 5G, A02s, A12, A32 5G, A42 5G
- Galaxy M Series: M10s, M20, M30, M30s, M40, M11, M12, M21, M31, M31s, M51
- Galaxy XCover Series: XCover4s, XCover FieldPro, XCover Pro
- Galaxy Tab Series: Tab Active Pro, Tab Active3, Tab A 8 (2019), Tab A with S Pen, Tab A 8.4 (2020), Tab A7, Tab S5e, Tab S6, Tab S6 5G, Tab S6 Lite, Tab S7, Tab S7 +
Samsung offers longer Android security updates than anyone else, but the company is still one of the slower major OEMs delivering Android OS updates. The venture took three months to launch the Android 11 implementation, while Google, OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi were all faster. Samsung still does not participate in Google’s Android beta program, which – surprisingly – is used by all the faster businesses. Samsung also refuses to follow the best practices of Android and add seamless update support, which allows users to apply all these updates without causing significant downtime of the phone.
Samsung’s new update plan is the best of any Android phone, but it still pales in comparison to Samsung’s favorite competitor, Apple. iOS still offers the best update plan in the industry, with iOS 14 support going all the way back to the iPhone 6S, a phone released in 2015.
Google is now embarrassed not to offer the best update plan for its own operating system, but it’s hard to imagine the company not quickly raising the Pixel line to match Samsung. After all, Google is where the majority of these spots come from, because it’s the business that develops Android. The Android source code still gets monthly security updates covering the latest four versions of Android, and goes back to Android 8.1. If Google wants, it can do three years of major updates and then four more years of security updates thereafter. The code is there.
There is still a lot of work to do, but thanks to Samsung for printing the Android update envelope. Android’s update situation is slowly getting better, one baby at a time.