Samsung Android Update Policy
In February 2021 it was hailed in media how Samsung has extended the support for most of its phones to four years after their release. However, this is somewhat confusing statement, as Samsung only promises security patches for selected devices for up to four years, but their Android update policy is somewhat different.
According to Samsung's update policy, company will provide three major Android updates after the phone's release to these models:
- All Samsung Galaxy S series phones, starting from Samsung Galaxy S10 and onwards.
- All Samsung Galaxy Z series phones, including all upcoming Z series phones, too. Z phones are typically foldable phones from Samsung.
- All Samsung Galaxy Note devices, starting from Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series.
- All Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablets, starting from Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 series.
Besides those devices, it gets bit more tricky..
Samsung promises three major Android updates to selected Samsung Galaxy A series phones. Basically, all the A series models that are significantly more expensive, will get the three year promise. Cheaper A series phones aren't included here - and Samsung doesn't state clearly how they will make the decision on which phones are eligible and which aren't. Obvously, they'll inform about the update policy for each A series phone when they get launches, but as a rule of thumb, only the more expensive ones in A series get the 3 year promise.
For everything else, including A series tablets, the mid-priced and budget A series phones, M series phones, F series phones and others, there's no promise. According to Samsung, for those devices, company "will provide the latest Android OS upgrades until the hardware specifications allow to provide the optimized mobile experience". Whatever that means.