Samsung pulls off a Christmas miracle for the Galaxy S20 FE
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The world's largest smartphone vendor has come a long way in the software support department in the last couple of years, making headlines as one of the first companies to deliver official Android 10 updates to its then-latest flagship devices in 2019 and once again pulling off a surprisingly early Android 11 rollout for the 5G-enabled Galaxy S20 trio recently.
Of course, Samsung also released a fourth member of the ultra-high-end GS20 family this fall, and although this particular model was initially slated to receive the newest OS version in January 2021, the upgrade has reportedly already kicked off in at least one major country.
We're talking about one of the world's most populous nations, specifically Russia, where a number of Galaxy S20 FE users have been allowed to leave Android 10 behind, replacing their phone's pre-installed One UI 2.5 skin with the 3.0 iteration of Samsung's proprietary user interface.
This is a huge update, mind you, tipping the scales at well over 2GB, with a whole bunch of performance improvements, security patches, and various other UI tweaks, add-ons, and cool new features baked in to make your relatively new S20 FE device feel even more modern.
Obviously, there's no word on when we should expect the OS promotion to spread to other regions (or specific US carriers), but we can safely assume some sort of expansion will take place by the end of the year. Maybe even before Christmas in certain markets.
In addition to the S20, S20+, S20 Ultra, and S20 FE, Samsung has also started updating the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra in select countries (including the US), which makes for an incredibly extensive Android 11-running lineup.
In comparison, Sony has barely kicked off one OTA Android 11 delivery earlier this week, while HMD Global is yet to bring a single Nokia-branded smartphone up to date. Now that's what we call unrivaled software support from the world's unrivaled handset manufacturing champion.
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