Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, Galaxy S23 Ultra do not support seamless updates on Android 13: Report
The Samsung Galaxy S23 series — which includes the company’s flagship Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra — was launched by the company last week. Although the company has announced changes and improvements to the hardware and software, it is reportedly still using an outdated method to update its latest handsets instead of Google’s seamless update mechanism. As a result, updates may take longer to install on the Galaxy S23 series than on other recently launched flagship phones, such as the Pixel 7 series.
Google introduced a new feature to Android smartphones in 2016 called seamless updates. Instead of rendering the user’s phone useless during the update process and forcing the user to wait for the process to complete, these updates are installed in the background, during everyday use. Therefore, when the process is complete, users only need to perform a quick reboot to start using the updated system.
One 9to5Google report claims that Samsung Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+ and Galaxy S33 Ultra do not support seamless updates. The publication says it has tested flagship smartphones with the Inware and Treble Check apps for Android, and both report that the phone does not support this function. Gadgets 360 used the Treble Check app on the Galaxy S23 Ultra and can confirm that the app reported that seamless updates were not supported on the handset.
Last September, Mishal Rahman of Esper stated that Android 13’s virtual A/B mission will bring seamless updates to even more phones running on Google’s mobile operating system. Samsung is one of the most popular smartphone manufacturers yet to support seamless updates on its devices.
When updates are installed on a smartphone that does not support seamless updating, the system will restart the device to initiate the update process. This can take up to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the update and the available memory of the smartphone.
On phones with seamless updates, phones have two system partitions (the A/B partition) and updates are installed on one while the system is running on the other. If the update fails, just reboot to the original partition and try installing the update again. Once the process is complete, the system will boot from the updated partition, which should take about a minute.
Last October, Hyesoon (Sally) Jeong, Vice President of Samsung Electronics stated in an interview that the company is working to deliver seamless updates and that it will roll out devices with One UI 6 this year. This means that users may have to wait for an update to Android 14 to get access to the updates seamlessly, but Samsung has yet to officially make an announcement on the matter.