It's raining security patches today for Galaxy smartphones. The Galaxy S8 is receiving the January 2019 security patch in some Europe markets, and an update is now rolling out for the Galaxy A5 (2016) and the Galaxy A5 (2017). The A5 (2016) is getting the update in a number of countries, but the A5 (2017)'s update is more limited in reach at the moment.
These updates are unlikely to offer any new features or changes other than enhanced security. The January 2019 patch fixes three critical vulnerabilities in Android, along with a slew of high-risk vulnerabilities. It also fixes four vulnerabilities that affect Samsung’s software, including one that can interrupt data transfer on a Wi-Fi connection. As we have said before, this is one of the smallest security updates we have seen in some time when it comes to the number of critical vulnerabilities that have been plugged.
To download the update over the air, open the Settings app on your phone, tap Software update, then tap Download updates manually. Firmware for the new update are available in our database as well and can be used for updating using a Windows PC.
