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Most mid-range smartphones from Samsung won’t receive Android Oreo prior to 2019, according to the company’s official update roadmap published via the Samsung Members mobile app earlier this week. The release schedule seen in the screenshots below reveals that the Galaxy J7 Neo is the only Samsung-made mid-ranger that’s yet to receive Oreo and is planned to be updated to a new version of the operating system before the end of the year. While the South Korean original equipment manufacturer already upgraded the last two generations of the Galaxy A series, that particular product family is now blending the lines between the mid-range and premium segment of the handset market and is more of an outliner than a sign that Samsung’s more affordable phones will enjoy better software support moving forward.
The Seoul-based tech giant has yet to share any concrete plans to upgrade its existing devices to Android 9 Pie, the latest version of the world’s most popular OS that Google officially released earlier this week. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are expected to be prioritized for the update and will likely be followed by the Galaxy Note 9 and the firm’s 2017 flagships. Based on Samsung’s established support practices, the Galaxy S9 line may be upgraded to Android 9 Pie as early as December.
Samsung‘s flagship devices now ship with a promise of three years of security patches and at least two major OS upgrades, though some lines such as the Galaxy S6 family ended up receiving three before the firm attached an end-of-life label to them. With Android 9 Pie marking the full adoption of Google’s Project Treble, manufacturers should have an easier time developing and testing updates for their handsets and tablets and possibly address one of the biggest issues of the Android ecosystem – fragmentation. The upcoming Galaxy Note 9 is expected to run Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box, much like the Galaxy Tab S4 launched last week.
