Just about a week ago, Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were enrolled to the Galaxy Beta program for Android 7.0 Nougat.
Now, according to the latest reports coming from Europe, Samsung Galaxy S7 units enrolled in the beta program are currently receiving a second Android 7.0 Nougat beta. This comes after the beta program went live in China, the UK, the U.S. as well as the local home of South Korea, but the latter markets are yet to see the update.
Samsung is pushing out this second build via an OTA update and anyone who is already using the first build should be ready for this new update, at least for those in Europe. It’s a minor addition based on what it weighs – a mere 92MB. As a result, you only get stability and performance improvements and bug fixes, among them a fix for the crashing Facebook app.
While this is happening for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, last year’s flagships, which include the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5, are also getting ready for this Android 7.0 Nougat update. After confirming that the development of Android Nougat for the Galaxy S6 series is underway, the latest reports can also affirm that Samsung Galaxy Note 5 is also at the same stage alongside the Galaxy Tab S2 tablet.
Progress seems to be good this year as a number of devices are already in contention to receive the Nougat update before the end of 2016. However, it is just the development stage, so don’t get your hopes too high. There are still a lot of internal tests that will have to be carried out before the update is pushed to carriers. After this, carriers will also take their time to test and tweak the OS before making it available – something that could take weeks or months. As a result, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 users may end up getting the update somewhere in early 2017, especially those who bought the phones through carriers.
As for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, the early onset of the beta tests should see the phones start receiving OTA updates before the end of 2016, but the story could be a little different when it comes to carrier-based models.