Nearly eight years after the characteristic was introduced, Samsung has lastly adopted Seamless Updates, a characteristic introduced by Google with Android Nougat in 2016. The characteristic makes the replace course of appear so much faster and with out requiring a person to blankly stare at an replace display screen for a number of minutes whereas the cellphone will get up to date. Sadly, this is not a characteristic that has been made obtainable for all Samsung units however from what we now have learnt, is simply restricted to the newly launched Galaxy A55 5G smartphone.
Apart from adopting a barely totally different design in comparison with different Samsung smartphones and utilizing Exynos processors, Samsung’s Galaxy A55 5G can be the primary Samsung smartphone to supply Seamless Updates. First reported by The Mobile Indian, the report claims that characteristic was seen after the set up of the March 2024 safety patch on their Galaxy A55 5G unit. The software program updates thereon confirmed two levels of set up with the primary stage being “Downloading and Installing” whereas the second was a “Verification stage”. Post this, all of the cellphone wanted was a restart to finish the replace course of. Gadgets 360 was capable of affirm this independently.
What are Seamless Updates?
Nearly eight years have handed since Google launched and adopted the characteristic. The Seamless Updates or A/B system updates have extra advantages than downsides in comparison with common updates or A system updates, however general are extra about comfort.
Seamless Updates, principally lets a person use his/her machine whereas the software program replace will get put in within the background. This reduces the same old downtime that customers face whereas a cellphone with out the characteristic will get up to date, and meaning calls, messaging and different apps are unavailable throughout the usual replace course of because the cellphone will normally show an replace display screen with a progress bar. While this is not an issue with tiny safety patches, greater software program updates do take some time. Seamless Updates also referred to as A/B system updates are usually not essentially about pace however extra about comfort. The replace course of is normally slower (because it occurs within the background) and all it wants is a restart each time the person has the time to take a break.
How does Seamless Updates work?
This is all potential due to A/B partitions which might imply that Seamless Updates want extra space. However additionally it is potential for OTA updates to be streamed (since Android 8.0) onto the B partition lowering the necessity to have a duplicate of the replace previous to set up however simply area for metadata (simply 100 kiB or 0.1 megabyte).
During the replace course of, the brand new software program replace will get downloaded and put in on partition B, whereas partition A is busy operating the presently obtainable software program for the person. Once the set up course of is checked and full on partition B, the system merely has to reboot after which switches to partition B, making partition A inactive and open for an additional replace.
The fantastic thing about the A/B course of is that if at any level the freshy downloaded replace fails, the system can reboot again to partition A (the older/present replace) and life goes on as common with the cellphone rebooting to the older software program and the person not ending up with a damaged cellphone. In the occasion of a failed set up on a daily A-only system replace, the person additionally dangers dropping all private knowledge (if not backed up elsewhere).
Samsung is certainly one of many final large smartphone producers to change to Seamless Updates. Currently plenty of manufacturers like Google’s Pixel, Motorola, Nokia (now HMD), OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo, Sony, and Xiaomi assist it.
