If you have a Samsung Galaxy device, then you need to check for this critical update and install as soon as available; you also need to be ready for a huge change coming to your device soon—it’s one you do not want to miss…
Samsung’s update warning affects millions of users
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Samsung’s March security rollout continues, with more budget models coming under cover, joining the premium devices which became eligible first. Carrier-unlocked S21 FE devices in the US, by way of example, joined the club just before the weekend.
Over the preceding two weeks, various flavors—network, region, model spec—of S24s, S23s and S22s had seen the update first, before older/budget variants were included. Ensuring your device downloads and installs the new software is critical—and you should do this as soon as it’s available for your network and model.
You can confirm whether your device will receive the monthly update here.
Amongst the dozens of Android and Samsung fixes, there are a couple of high-risk vulnerabilities patched, both of which open a door to some level of device take-over—enabling malware to potentially control some or all of your device.
The availability of the March update isn’t the biggest news of the week. Samsung has finally jumped aboard Google’s seamless update roadshow after years of avoidance. Rather than run the download, install, reboot cycle specifically for a new update, the new system downloads and installs an update in the background to a secondary partition on the device, and then reboots from that partition when it next restarts.
Once that reboot has taken place, the secondary partition becomes primary, and the other partition awaits the next update. This reduces the time during which the device cannot be used normally, with most of this taking place in the background.
As Google explains, “A/B system updates, also known as seamless updates, ensure a workable booting system remains on the disk during an over-the-air (OTA) update. This reduces the likelihood of an inactive device after an update, which means fewer device replacements and device reflashes at repair and warranty centers.”
As you can see in the X post above, you will be able to tell if a seamless update is being installed by the two progress bars—one for the download/install and the other for verification. The Galaxy A55 has been playing guinea pig for Samsung’s initial seamless update go-live, but one assumes this is set to go out much more widely over the coming months. It’s baited breath time as wait to see which devices will be next.
Whether it will extend across all models remains to be seen. If we have come to expect anything from Samsung updates, it’s complexity and needing to consult checklists to find out what, when and for how long.
So why now? It could be that Samsung was pushed rather than decided to jump. A recent Android Open Source Project comment suggested the legacy alternative to A/B (seamless) approach would be removed after eight years of parallel running.
Given seamless updates first became available in 2016, Samsung’s holding out has become legendary. On the one hand this has been a painful thorn for the Android project, on the other there is no Android without Samsung, so one expects there have been a raft of discussions in the background. Again, because updates clearly need to be mysterious—we don’t yet know what the wider approach will be from here.
While this might shorten the update process to just a minute or two reboot during which the device is unusable, it won’t simplify the Samsung/Android update combination each month, which then deploys across the patchwork quilt of devices.
That said, it will remove the need for user action. “Because A/B updates happen in the background,” Google explains, “they are no longer user-initiated. To avoid disrupting users, it is recommended that updates are scheduled when the device is in idle maintenance mode, such as overnight, and on Wi-Fi.”
This is all still a long way from Apple’s one-stop-shop, of course. But as iPhone and Android become ever more alike, maybe it will get a little closer. Eventually…
Alex Mitchell is your go-to expert for all things mobile. With a passion for the latest smartphones, apps, and mobile innovations, Alex provides in-depth reviews, insightful analyses, and breaking news about the ever-evolving world of mobile technology. Stay connected with Alex to navigate the fast-paced realm of mobile devices.
