Owners of Samsung flagships should be rightly excited about the imminent(ish) arrival of Android 15 on their phones, bringing a raft of security and privacy enhancements. But there’s some last minute disappointment that looks like being confirmed this week. And for those who have dropped $1500 on an S24 Ultra in the last few months, this will not play well.
Samsung has just confirmed that One UI 7 for the Galaxy S series “will be released in the first quarter, and will be applied sequentially to existing Galaxy devices.” All except the new S25 of course, which will launch with One UI 7 AKA Android 15 right out of the box. Perhaps this ensures a period of OS exclusivity to encourage more users to churn.
Picking up on the latest leaks, Android Headlines suggests “owners of Samsung’s previous-gen flagship phones might receive it between late February and early March,” while SammyFans suggests that a second January OS update for S24s signals “that Samsung is still polishing the major firmware, which isn’t ready yet for deployment on a public scale.” Leaker Tarun Vats, posting on X, has foretold this kind of wait for some time, that current pre-S25 devices are likely to be updated at the end of February or some time in March. Galaxy S24 owners have hoped to see an update much sooner after this week’s S25 launch. That — it seems — is not to be. It could mean an update some four months after Google’s Pixel.
Putting tantalizing software updates to one side, this matters because Android 15 is a security and privacy upgrade more than anything else, and does a good job of narrowing the gap to iPhone when it comes to safeguarding users, their devices and their data. And while Google has done a sterling job with this latest OS, Samsung has gone even further, blocking the sideloading of risky apps for all but the most stubborn users and gong some way toward an iPhone-like phone lockdown.
Google’s advances include live threat detection to flag malware early if it detects risky on-device app behavior, the expansion of Play Protect to stop users from being tricked into installing unofficial versions of their apps, and network defense to block insecure connections. Samsung will also allow 2G to be blocked across its devices for the first time.
It is unclear what’s included with this second January Galaxy S24 update. Samsung released its own fixes and the Android-wide ones from Google early in the month. Even so, it is — as always — imperative for users to update as soon as they can. That’s the other difference between S25 and S24 (and older) devices. The new phone is likely to bring seamless updates to a Samsung flagship for the first time. It seems other devices will miss out.
Samsung’s deployment of Android 15 is the nearest we’ve had yet to an iPhone-matching Android device, albeit there’s still a gap in some key areas. If security and privacy is important, then the device itself and Samsung’s expanded Knox architecture — which better mirrors Apple’s walled device garden — makes for a compelling upgrade.
We should hopefully know more on when these security and privacy upgrades will reach current devices over the coming days. Samsung as ever hasn’t confirmed any of this newly leaked information.
