Samsung has released an update for the Galaxy S6 series, 7 years after the phones launch

Every once in a while, Samsung throws in a surprise for those who use its older phones. Recently, the company updated models like the Galaxy S7 or S8 to fix some minor issues they still had, and now the company is offering a similar update for the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+ phones, models released in 2015, around the same time as the iPhone 6s, which itself is currently out of software support as of iOS 16.

A seemingly minor update has been released for Galaxy S6 models

The G920FXXU6EVG1 and G925FXXU6EVG3 updates have been released in the Netherlands and Belgium for S6 models and will most likely arrive on all devices of this genre that are still in use. This time around, Samsung doesn’t specifically mention what issues it fixes, such as the GPS issue on other recently updated variants, but says it has “improved performance and some features”. Most likely though, it’s still fixing an older GPS issue.

Unfortunately for Galaxy S6 users, the new update doesn’t add any other improvements. It doesn’t make the switch to a newer version of Android, nor to the latest security update from Google. Thus, it’s unclear what the concrete purpose is for these late updates. Chances are slim that many of these devices are still in use after so long, and the users who are still operating them have already been using the phones with these “issues” for 7 years without seeming to mind.

Given that the update “weighs” only 13 MB, it was clear that it wouldn’t make big changes. Still, the release is especially unusual for the Android device market, which has only recently gone from only two-year updates, to three or four years, to five years of security updates.