Samsung's software update game is crazy good. It was already better than anything else a couple of years back when the company was providing two major OS upgrades to most of its devices, flagship or otherwise, and back in 2020, Samsung took things a step further by announcing support for three major OS upgrades for some devices launched in 2019 and later.
And this year, well, Samsung did what no one had expected: The Korean giant now aims to release four major OS upgrades for many of its mid-range phones and all of its flagships launched 2021 onwards. That's a level of support even Google doesn't provide, even though the Pixel lineup is considered to be kind of like the iPhone of the Android world, especially with Google now controlling both the hardware and software on Pixel smartphones.
Again, it's the kind of support that has never been seen before in the world of Android smartphones and tablets, with even Google failing to match it. But despite all these steps in improving its long-term update game, there's still one thing that bothers me.
It's the fact that to this day, the flagship phones Samsung launches in the second half of each year come with an year-old version of Android. I'm talking about the premier flagship lineups – the Galaxy Note was that lineup for the longest time, and now, it's Samsung Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Z Flip series.
Each one of them has launched with the version of Android from a year before, even though these flagship devices have launched every August since at least 2015, just a month before Google tends to release the latest Android version for its own phones. That has basically meant that these devices are treated to the same duration of software support (as far as major updates are concerned) as the Galaxy S line that launches in the first half of every year.
In fact, before Android 10, Google used to release new Android versions publicly in early August, the same month Samsung would announce each new Note smartphone. And in most cases, that used to mean that Samsung's latest flagship for the second half of the year would go on sale after the latest Android version had been released by Google, which was often a point of contention for Galaxy customers.
These days that's not the case: New Android OS releases for the general public tend to happen in September since Android 10, and Android 12 even came out in October, somewhat softening the blow. But that doesn't change the fact that if you buy one of Samsung's flagships launched in the second half of the year, you're still getting an older version of Android despite the newer one not being so far away.
However, sadly the solution isn't so simple. For one, Samsung can't delay launching these flagships from fear of losing sales to the year's newest iPhone, which tends to go on sale in September or October and continues to sell in huge numbers all the way through to the holiday season.
Such a delay would also mean moving the the next Galaxy S series to sometime later the following year, as well. And even if Samsung manages to do all of that, there's still the task of adapting its custom skin and features to the latest version of Android before it can start putting it on its own devices, which probably can't happen much quicker than it already does (though we hear Samsung is trying to do so with Android 13).
Still, it disappoints me that even here in 2022, the next Galaxy flagship launch will take place with a version of Android that was released in 2021. Sure, there will be a newer version of One UI (One UI 5.0) on-board, but the new flagship will get the same number of Android OS upgrades as the one that launched in the first half of the year.
That's partly a good thing as all of Samsung's customers that buy its flagships in the current year get the same level of software support, and that's fair. But again, it's a problem I really, really wish Samsung could somehow fix, even though there seem to be no simple — or complex — solutions, other than for Samsung to lose sales to the iPhone and just launch flagship devices considerably later than it does right now, both in the first and second half of each new year.
