The nice thing about Android being an open platform is that each manufacturer has some freedom to implement the system as they see fit, adding or removing features as they see fit. No manufacturer demonstrates this better than Samsung, whose One UI layer is practically a self-contained system.
[Android 13 para Samsung es oficial: novedades y todos los móviles compatibles con One UI 5.0]
The bad side of all this is that when Google implements a very good novelty in Android, it does not reach all mobiles in the same way; and again we see it with Samsung, whose phones do not receive all the news of each new version of Android.
Best Samsung Updates
This is something that we can notice every time we update our Samsung mobile to the latest firmware version: every time the complete update must be downloaded to the internal memory and installed, which can take almost half an hour of our time. In other words, we have to stop using mobile for a while, which is more and more difficult nowadays.
Android already has the solution for this. His name is ‘transparent updates’, updates without interruption, and it is one of the best innovations that the system has received in recent years. Basically, it is a system that allows installation in the background, which is only completed by restarting the device. It works by dividing the available ROM storage into two, part A and part B; when an update arrives, the new firmware is installed in part B, but part A is still used as long as we continue to use the mobile. When we reboot, the new Part B firmware is automatically loaded, so much of the installation can be “skipped”.
Since the release of Android 13, all manufacturers are required divide the ROM storage in this way A/B; but technically that doesn’t require them to adopt these types of updates, and that’s why Samsung won’t support them yet when it releases One UI 5.0, based on Android 13.
At least Samsung VP Sally Jeong has confirmed that Samsung is already working on “seamless” updates and hopes that be implemented in One UI 6.0, which will be released next year with the next version of Android. It’s a consolation, even if it means that we will have to continue to support updates that interrupt the use of the device.
The good news is that Samsung seems motivated to update its phones to the latest version of Android as soon as possible, and Jeong confirmed that the plan is for all high-end phones to receive it before the end of the year.