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Samsung has never really been popular for its software updates, both the big version of Android and the usual security fixes. To its credit, it has been turning the page and has been more consistent and timely in pushing its latest phone updates. Of course, that only applies to those models that are still within their regular two-year support period. This is why it is surprising and even intriguing that Samsung suddenly released an update for the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 series, years after they reached the end of their useful lives.
Both phones come from a forgotten time, when Samsung’s numbering scheme for the two phone series did not match. In other words, both phones were launched in 2015. The Galaxy S6 was the first in the Galaxy S series to have an “Edge” model with a curved-edge display, while the Galaxy Note 5 went down in history as the first and the last of its it’s nice not to have a microSD card slot and not to have a waterproof rating.
Phones may have gone out of style a long time ago and have probably even been forgotten. Surprisingly, Samsung failed to do so and released a small firmware update that first made its way to South Korean units before finally hitting the European and Latin American markets.
The update’s changelog is just as mysterious as the update itself, citing only security-related stabilization code. It does not exceed the level of the Android security patch and is still locked in September 2018. Unsurprisingly, the phones are also not updated from Android 7.0 Nougat.
One can only assume that Samsung found a critical vulnerability in these phones and thought it was easy enough to roll out a quick fix. If anything, it shows that OEMs, especially large ones, can release critical security fixes beyond the two-year period that was actually born out of the convention rather than any technical restrictions.
