North American carriers have made considerable progress in how quickly they roll out new software updates for Galaxy devices compared to the rest of the world, but there's still room for improvement when it comes to updates for unlocked variants of Samsung's phones and tablets. Case in point: Unlocked units of the Galaxy A50 are only just making the jump to Android 11 in the US, two months after the carrier variants and nearly four months after international models were first updated.
But the good news is that those who own an unlocked Galaxy A50 can finally grab what will be the last big update for their phones. That's right: Android 11 is it for Samsung's popular 2019 mid-range phone, as it doesn't make the cut for Samsung's industry-defining software update policy that was announced last year. Still, it's been a good run for the A50, and it will possibly get the One UI 3.5 update somewhere down the line before Samsung starts limiting it to just security updates.
For those wondering, the Android 11 update includes One UI 3.1, and it also bundles the June 2021 security patch. It should be available over the air right now, and you can try downloading it from the phone’s Settings » Software update menu. The Android 11 firmware is also available in our archive and can be used for manually upgrading to the latest software (version A505U1UEUCDUF1) using a Windows PC.
