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After struggling with delivering a stable version of Android 8.0 Oreo for the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and a number of its mid-range smartphones, Samsung delayed the arrival of its next custom implementation of Google’s OS for even more devices. Last year’s Galaxy J3, Galaxy J5, Galaxy J5 Pro, and Galaxy J7 were all supposed to start receiving the new firmware build by next Friday, July 13, with the company now pushing back that target date to September 28. No official reason for the decision has been provided by Samsung, though development issues are likely to be blamed for the latest turn of events.
Samsung isn’t the only original equipment manufacturer that struggled with modifying and optimizing Android Oreo for its devices, with the likes of HTC and LG previously encountering similar issues. Mobile service providers in the United States also placed Android Oreo rollouts for select models on hold on numerous occasions over the first half of the year, often citing unforeseen bugs and technical issues as the cause of such decisions. While the latest stable iteration of Google’s mobile operating system comes with a major backend change in the form of Project Treble support, OEMs aren’t required to implement that reworked framework into their OS implementations, so long as they’re developing them for devices that launched with Android 7.X Nougat or an older software build. Samsung hasn’t updated any of its handsets with Project Treble as part of its Android Oreo firmware and the first handsets from the company that support the initiative are the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus released in mid-March.
Software updates remain one of the biggest issues with the Android ecosystem as fragmentation and cost-cutting led to a market full of devices that aren’t receiving security patches on a regular basis, or at all. Samsung is one of the more diligent OEMs when it comes to Android updates but is still struggling on a number of fronts, though more widespread Project Treble adoption may help it overcome some of the obstacles it’s currently facing.