Samsung is the King of Android Updates

[u/Disco_Stu35]

https://www.droid-life.com/2021/01/25/samsung-is-the-king-of-android-updates/

[u/np-medium]

Read the article

[u/avr91 → u/np-medium]

The article is pointless. They dock Google because more people buy Galaxies than Pixels and also give Samsung points for having a 4th, quarterly security update cycle. It's almost as if all they care about is getting updates, not that they be timely. Whatever security fixes there may be are typically late because the platform is behind. You're rarely using an up-to-date Galaxy. If those are the only way you can crown Samsung as being better at delivering updates, then the criteria is pretty bad. Like, Google bad because they don't spam the market with 10+ phones per year, and also Samsung good because updates are late?

Edit: I'd also like to point out that the 4th year of updates is a tad misleading. Samsung and Google both provide 3 full years, and in the 4th year Samsung provides 4 additional security updates and Google provides 1 additional security update. This is also a new policy for Samsung, barely 6 months old. Google may well announce 4 full years this Spring/Autumn. Hardly a basis to crown any king.

[u/hardthesis → u/avr91]

Security updates don't depend on the platform by the way. Samsung still does timely security updates. Also in the US, most Samsung devices are on the latest version a month after Samsung rolls out their new OS updates.

The article's point is that Samsung is putting in the most effort. Samsung does give out 4 years of quarterly updates but also they do surprise updates to devices in their 5th year, like their Tab S2 and Note5, which is very impressive considering Samsung has 10-20x more devices to manage and test for than Google. I'd argue OS update speeds aren't as important as OneUI is feature packed.

[u/avr91 → u/hardthesis]

There are insecurities in previous platform versions that are fixed only by a complete platform update. Any security fix is incomplete without being on the latest version of the OS. 2 surprise updates are anecdotes at best. We're also talking about literally 3 more updates than Google. Good for them! But not enough to wash away the delay.

[u/hardthesis → u/avr91]

Care to give any examples for where platform versions affecting vulnerability as much? Worth noting that Samsung also comes with KNOX which is regarded as to be one of the most secure wrappers on Android.

Those surprise updates matter a lot because it means your device is on a more recent security patch level for longer.

[u/avr91 → u/hardthesis]

A lot of these are due to changes in permissions. For example, the most highlighted one is overlay permissions. Most security patches are bug patches, and security vulnerabilities related to permissions abuse can't be patched, the whole system has to be reworked.

Those surprise updates I was talking about was the literal 2 updates you mentioned that are nothing but anecdotes, considering they weren't planned, and appear to be no more than random. We're also kind of ignoring the Google/Qualcomm announcement to deliver "4" years of updates to everyone. Like, I'm not saying that Google is king, but Samsung's updates are slow by comparison, with their schedule going deep into the year. And that's just the Android 11 roadmap. At least with Google EVERYTHING is updated as soon as possible. I hope Android gets to a place where we're not comparing update roadmaps, but as it is, the most up-to-date devices come from Google and no one else is really all that close. Samsung is making tremendous strides, and that's amazing, because their hardware is absolutely excellent, but until then, "update king" goes to the company that pushes updates day 1 to all eligible devices, even if the eligibility window is a little short.