Galaxy S25 Rumored to Get Seamless OTA Updates [Android News Byte]

Samsung's flagship series is finally getting support for Android's A/B firmware updates.

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Links
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Galaxy S25 Rumor - https://x.com/chunvn8888/status/18522...


Video Description
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Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Android News Byte.
Over the weekend, a new Samsung rumor suggested that the upcoming Galaxy S25 series will be getting support for Android's seamless update feature.


Seamless Firmware Updates
If you're not familiar with what seamless updates are, then that's completely understandable.
The old method of updating the firmware involved the file itself downloading in the background.
And then you get a notification telling you that the update is ready to be installed.

You would then confirm you want to install the update and then the smartphone or tablet would reboot.
And the update itself would be installed onto the sole partitions that the Android firmware was using.
This update tended to take some time, and it would result in you not being able to use your phone or any of your apps while the update was being installed.

Not the worst thing in the world, but it was enough of an inconvenience that caused people to delay the update until later.
Sometimes causing them to forget about it entirely.

This changed back in 2019 when Google introduced its A/B partition system into Android.
With this change, the update would be downloaded into the background, and then it would be installed onto the inactive partition.
That allowed you to continue using your device while the new firmware was installed on a duplicate partition system.

You would then be instructed to reboot the smartphone or tablet once the update had been completed.
And it would actually just switch the active partition to the one that had just been updated.
With your previous version of Android still sitting on the other partition until the next update was ready to be installed.

So while you gained a bit of extra usability with this new A/B update system.
It required a bit more storage in order to implement this two partition system.


Galaxy S25 Seamless updates
For years, Google has been trying to convince smartphone OEMs to switch to the new system
And most of them have done so. Even Xiaomi's low-end smartphones use the A/B partition system but Samsung has been a major holdout for one reason or another.

Some had suspected that Samsung wasn't happy with the extra storage requirements for the dual partition setup.
While others believe it was due to the update install process itself taking much longer since it's all handled in the background.

The update can't use too much of the CPU or it will cause other apps to slow down to a crawl.
And that's the point of the new seamless update feature. It allows you to continue using the phone like normal while the update is installed in the background.

Samsung finally transitioned to this new partition system with the launch of the Galaxy A55 5G, which was released earlier this year.
So many had suspected that the S25 series would be switching to it as well.

This still has not been officially confirmed yet, but a new leak from Chun Bhai claims Samsung is finally ready to make the switch.
With the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra all implementing the seamless update feature next year.


conclusion
I've been using Google Pixel and Xiaomi Redmi devices with this feature for years.
And it's honestly surprised me that Samsung has been so reluctant to make the transition.

Not only do I prefer to have the updates installed in the background, which allows me to continue using my phone like normal.
But it also adds a bit of redundancy to the OTA firmware update process
Since the phone will revert back to the previous firmware if a bootloop occurs from the new install

Something I had happen to me just recently with the Redmi Note 13 Pro

This move makes me wonder if Google will finally make seamless updates a requirement so the experience is the same across all brands.

Let me know what you think about seamless updates down in the comments section below

Summary
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1. Intro [00:00]
2. Seamless OTA Updates [00:23]
3. Galaxy S25 A/B Partition System [02:51]
4. Conclusion [04:41]


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