No more downgrade! Samsung Galaxy S8 November security update rolling out with new bootloader

Samsung has come a long way in terms of maintaining its devices. The OEM used to be the laughing stock on Android for just how buggy and half baked its software, then Touchwiz, was. Fast-forward to today, they are one of the best-performing OEMs in terms of pushing out periodic updates.

Be the monthly patches or whole operating system upgrades, Samsung really does have it figured out for the most part. It is then no surprise that its Android 10-based One UI 2.0 is almost out for the Galaxy S10 and Note 10 family of devices.

Besides One UI 2.0 beta updates, Samsung recently rolled out December security patch for a number of devices. The list includes current gen flagships like Galaxy Fold as well as legacy phones such as Galaxy Note 8.

Interestingly, there is no sign of such updates for Galaxy S8. The ‘Active’ variant of this phone picked up November patch a few days ago. As Galaxy S8 is not getting Android 10, people are concerned about early abandonment. No worry though, as a new update is finally hitting the units in Europe.  

The OTA brings the software build number to DSK9 as well as bundles the November 1 security patch level. It weighs in at a little under 600 MB. The official changelog is not at all exciting, but we dug up some interesting things.

Changelog
1. A new version of bootloader (6).
2.November security patch.

(Source)

Yes, there’s a new bootloader (v6). As a result, one can’t go back to older (v5 based) builds via simple software-based flashing.

The Galaxy S8 has been pretty well updated in the recent past. The US unlocked variant of the Galaxy S8 has already been updated to the November security patch update. There was yet another November update that went out to the Exynos Galaxy S8 in past, but you had to download it manually.

The S8 family of phones came out in Q1 of 2017 and kickstarted the low bezel trend in the smartphone industry that we are seeing today. The global variant of the phone is powered by an Exynos 8895 CPU running four cores at 1.7 GHz and four cores at 2.3 GHz.

Download

At the time of writing, we only have the download link to the update for the regular Galaxy S8 (SM-G950F). We shall update when we get links for other models.

• Device: Galaxy S8
• Model: SM-G950F
• Channel: Global Stable
• Version: G950FXXU6DSK9
• Android: 9
  • Type: Recovery (Delta)
    • Download: Link

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