The Samsung Galaxy S23 series – consisting of the company’s flagship Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S23 Ultra – was launched by the company last week. Despite the company announcing changes and improvements to the hardware and software, it is reportedly still using an outdated method of updating its latest handsets instead of Google’s seamless update mechanism. Therefore, installing updates on the Galaxy S23 range might take longer compared to other recently launched flagship phones like the Pixel 7 series.
In 2016, Google introduced a new feature for Android smartphones called “Seamless Updates”. Rather than rendering a user’s phone unusable during an update and forcing them to wait for the process to complete, these updates are installed in the background during day-to-day use. Therefore, when the process is complete, users just need to perform a quick reboot to use the updated system.
A 9to5 Google report states that the Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S33 Ultra do not support seamless updates. The release states that the flagship smartphones have been tested with Inware and the Treble Check apps for Android and both reported that the phones do not support this functionality. Gadgets 360 used the Treble Check application on the Galaxy S23 Ultra and was able to confirm that the seamless updates reported by the app were not supported on the handset.
Samsung Galaxy S23 (left) and Galaxy S23 Ultra (right) do not support seamless updates
Last September, Espers Mishal Rahman specified that Android 13’s virtual A/B mandate would enable seamless updates to even more phones running Google’s mobile operating system. Samsung is one of the most popular smartphone manufacturers that still doesn’t support seamless updates on their devices.
When updates are installed on a smartphone that does not support seamless updates, the system will restart the device to start the update process. Depending on the size of the update and the built-in memory of the smartphone, this can take up to 20 minutes.
On phones with seamless updates, the handset has two system partitions (A/B partitions) and updates are installed on one partition while the system runs on the other. If the update process fails, the phone simply reboots into the original partition and tries to install the update again. Once the process is complete, the system will boot from the upgraded partition, which should take about a minute.
Last October, Hyesoon (Sally) Jeong, Vice President at Samsung Electronics specified in an interview that the company is working on offering seamless updates and that they will be rolled out on devices running One UI 6 later this year. This means users may have to wait for an update to Android 14 to have access to seamless updates, but Samsung hasn’t made any official announcement on this yet.
