Samsung does the unthinkable with Android 10 update for US unlocked Galaxy Note 9
Well, this is unusual. The official US unlocked variant of the Galaxy Note 9 has reportedly started receiving its stable Android 10 update a few weeks after the same rollout got underway in Europe.
That's actually not the most surprising part of the story, although compared to some of Samsung's Android Pie deliveries last year, the turnaround is definitely pretty impressive. What never happens, however, and is in fact happening here is a major OS promotion making its way over-the-air to a US unlocked Galaxy flagship before carriers can take care of the same device.
Technically, the Galaxy Note 9 has scored Android 10 goodies with One UI 2.0 tweaks on top on a few US carriers already, but we're not talking about any of the nation's "big four" industry players. Instead, US Cellular, Xfinity Mobile, Spectrum Mobile, and Comcast apparently managed to beat Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile to the punch, and now the same can be said about unlocked models purchased directly from Samsung, as well as authorized retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and B&H Photo Video.
These are units carrying the SM-N960U label, mind you, and they're unsurprisingly receiving massive updates tipping the scales at close to 2GB, including all the standard (Samsung-modified) Android 10 good stuff, as well as January security patches.
In case you're wondering, Samsung delivered the same update to the US unlocked Galaxy S10 family roughly a week after the first carrier-specific variants left Android Pie behind, applying a similar schedule to the Note 10 and Note 10+.
Let's just hope this change of pace for the Galaxy Note 9 doesn't mean mobile network operators have bumped into any serious glitches while "optimizing" their Android 10 updates. The Galaxy S9 and S9+ are also yet to make the jump as far as both US unlocked and major carrier-locked models are concerned, but if everything goes according to Samsung's latest plans, all that should change very soon.
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