Android has been supporting the useful ability to install system updates in the background for years, requiring only a quick reboot to apply the changes. With monthly updates becoming the norm, it is a huge improvement in the quality of life. Samsung has been postponing the feature for years, and that doesn’t change, as the Galaxy S21 series doesn’t yet support perfect updates.
Continuous updates use A / B partitions to install an update in the background while you are still using the phone. This has some benefits, such as less risk of corrupted data during an update, but also the simple fact that your phone is not out of service for almost 20 minutes.
It was widely assumed that Google would require support for this update method with Android 11, as some leaked documents apparently proved, but apparently Google walked back about that decision since then.
That is, Samsung’s Galaxy S21, S21 + and S21 Ultra do not yet support the five-year continuous updates feature. Samsung’s enemy, Max Weinbach annotated on Twitter that he couldn’t find any mention of A / B updates on a system image on a Galaxy S21 device. Looking at two apps, Treble Info and Treble Check, the story is the same there, continuous updates are marked as unsupported. These results should be viewed with a grain of salt, however, as the app is also reporting that Treble is not compatible, something that is not true for any conventional Android device for years, according to Google’s requirements. These apps are probably just incorrect reports about these devices or it may be something with the current version of Samsung software. In any case, there is little chance that these phones are not compatible with Treble.
Why does Samsung not support the feature? The company did not mention anything officially, although we have made a statement, but in the past the justification revolved around storage. A / B updates occur at the expense of part of the integrated storage, approximately 3 GB or more. In a year when the microSD card slot was removed, I think it’s not the worse Excuse.
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