AdminAnother year, another Samsung smartphone that does not use the full potential of Android. The new Galaxy S23 lineup again fails to provide users with hassle-free Android updates – a useful tool that reduces phone inactivity time while updating the operating system.
During the recent Samsung Unpacked 2023 event, the company presented a new line of smartphones: Samsung Galaxy S23, Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus and the top model Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. All three phones come with Qualcomm’s new custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip and improved 12MP selfie cameras – with the Ultra bumping up its main camera to a whopping 200MP.
But as noted Android Police (opens in a new tab)despite these updates, smartphones do not yet support one of Android’s most useful features: seamless updates.
Typically, updating your device is something of a nuisance. You have to sit and stare at the progress bar screen – its other functions have become inaccessible and useless – and only the slow ticking of the counter and text updates about the download progress keep you entertained.
The hassle-free updates feature is designed to eliminate most of this boring downtime. When you want to update your phone, the seamless update tool allows it to practically split into two parts; one partition remains active and usable in the old OS, allowing normal access to phone applications, and the other partition is updated to the new OS.
When the installation process is complete, your device can delete the partition itself and load you into the new operating system – there is still a slight delay at this point, but it is much shorter and has much less impact than opting out of hassle-free updates.
Unfortunately, it looks like (at least for now) Samsung will continue to shun this nifty tool in favor of slower updates.
Time to update
In our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S23 review and full Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review, we found plenty of reasons to be impressed with both smartphones.
The lack of seamless updates is unlikely to be a hindrance to most people – it’s just a shame that Samsung is pausing its devices this way. Sure, the tool has its downsides as you need to be able to effectively install two operating systems simultaneously and it reduces the available memory of your phone. But since the S23 Plus and Ultra are ditching their base 128GB model in favor of 256GB, they likely have space to spare.
We’ll have to wait and see if Samsung releases an update to change support for the S23 lineup for seamless updates, but that seems unlikely. Considering this isn’t the first time it’s skipped the feature, we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also missing from next year’s Galaxy S24 phones.
