Ron Amadeo
Samsung is increasing 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 operating system updates and four years of security updates, surpassing even what Google offers in the Pixel line.
In the announcement, Samsung states: “In the past decade, Samsung has made significant progress in simplifying and accelerating its regular security updates. Samsung has worked closely with its operating system and chipset partners, as well as more than 200 operators around the world, to ensure that billions of Galaxy devices receive timely security patches. “Samsung has experimented with bringing four years of updates to its own Exynos SoC devices, but now it looks like the company is putting Qualcomm models on board as well.
Remember that they are not necessarily a month security updates. Samsung says it is delivering four years of “monthly or quarterly” updates, depending on the age of the device. The current Samsung security bulletin page has the Galaxy S9 (2018) on the monthly update plan, while the Galaxy S8 is on the quarterly plan. So it looks like three years of monthly security updates and another year of quarterly updates.
As for which phones are receiving four years of security updates, the answer is “a lot”. They are not just flagships; many medium-sized devices and tablets since 2019 are included, totaling “more than 130 models”. Here is the complete list.
- Galaxy folding 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 is offering longer Android security updates than any other company, but the company is still one of the top slowest OEMs when it comes to providing Android operating system updates. The company took three months to start launching Android 11, while Google, OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi were all faster. Samsung does not yet participate in Google’s Android beta program, which – surprise – is used by all the fastest companies. Samsung also refuses to follow Android’s best practices and add continuous update support, which allows users to apply all of these updates without incurring significant phone downtime.
Samsung’s new update plan is the best of any Android phone, but it’s still small compared to Samsung’s favorite competitor, Apple. IOS still offers the best upgrade plan in the industry, with support for iOS 14 dating back to the iPhone 6S, a phone launched in 2015.
Google is now in the embarrassing position of not offering the best upgrade plan for its own operating system, but it is hard to imagine the company not quickly increasing the Pixel line to match Samsung. After all, most of these patches come from Google, since it is the company that develops Android. Android’s source code still receives monthly security updates covering the four most recent versions of Android, since Android 8.1. If Google wanted to, it could do three years of major updates and then four most years of security updates after that. The code is out there.
There is still a lot of work to do, but congratulations to Samsung for pushing the Android update envelope. The Android update situation is slowly improving, one step at a time.