October security patch hits the Galaxy A5 (2016) and A5 (2017)

The September security patch got lost in the hubbub of Samsung's focus on patching the BlueBorne vulnerability on its smartphones. We saw a slew of updates for Samsung phones in September without the month's security patch and had guessed early on that the company would directly bring us the October security patch, and that is what is happening now. Only, Samsung has decided to make the Galaxy A5 (2016) and Galaxy A5 (2017) the first recipients of the latest security patch.

October security patch hits the mid-range first

Owners of recent devices, especially flagship ones like the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8, aren't going to like this, but Samsung has been moving to a “we don't care if flagships get the newest updates first” philosophy in recent years, at least for minor updates. With that said, the October security patch should be hitting more devices in the coming days. As Samsung had detailed at the beginning of the month, the October patch brings fixes for 215 vulnerabilities discovered in Android and six exploits that are exclusive to Samsung's software.

The update is currently rolling out in the Netherlands. To see if it is available on your A5 (2016) or A5 (2017), head into the phone's settings, tap Software update, then hit the Download updates manually button. As usual, you can wait for the update to show up on its own. You can also download the relevant firmware from our database and manually flash it on your phone; the A5 (2016) firmware hasn't gone live yet, but that should change in the very near future.

Have the update with the October security patch on another device? Let us know in the comments!

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