Samsung to Offer Monthly Security Updates for Unlocked Handsets

Samsung to Offer Monthly Security Updates for Unlocked Handsets

  • Mar 16, 2017

Rule number one of keeping your mobile data safe is to keep your device up-to-date with the latest patches on security vulnerabilities, but that is sort of hard to do when the company that makes your device isn’t putting out updates on a regular basis.

As things stand now, users of Samsung’s most recent Galaxy handsets are currently running the December security patch, with January, February and March missing.

Now, Samsung hopes to change that. The company is promising that users will begin to see monthly security upgrades on their unlocked Android handsets.

Google has been delivering monthly security patches for Android for some time now and some third-party manufacturers have followed suit, but Samsung – the world’s largest Android vender – has been rolling out its own patches on a quarterly basis.

Samsung says it isn’t easy to update tens of millions of devices across different markets, especially when Samsung doesn’t have full control over the majority of its software releases – carriers like to tweak and approve them first – but it does have full control over unlocked handsets.  

The South Korean company says it has worked through the “challenges” involved with delivering the latest security patches in a timely manner so users will no longer have to wait several months to catch up.

It’s unclear whether Samsung will be rolling out a similar update policy in other markets, or whether it will be working with carriers to release timely patches for locked devices, too. But for now, this is good news for those in the U.S. who have an unlocked Galaxy smartphone.

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