Samsung Galaxy S7 series from 2016 gets another critical security update

In the Android community, it is common practice for devices to be updated for at least three years. In these three years, a device is set to get updated to two new versions of Android and the third year, the device should receive regular security updates after which, a device is no longer supported.

However, in the recent past there seem to have been a few exceptions, especially in Samsung’s camp. The Samsung Galaxy S7 series of devices were unveiled back in 2016 and they’re currently unsupported.

Despite having been discontinued, we saw the Samsung Galaxy S7 bag a critical security update back in May. While the update did not bring any changes to the devices’s Android security patch level, it addressed a critical vulnerability related to SVE-2020-16747.

Fast forward to today and Samsung is once again rolling out an update to the Galaxy S7 devices. As at the time of writing, we still don’t know much about this update but if history is anything to go by, it is probably another critical system update.

According to the update’s changelog, this is an urgent software update for the S7 devices. The notification then advises users to update their software to the latest version to avoid errors.

Either way, it is impressive to see a company go out of its way to push out an update to its devices long after its support period has expired.We can only hope that other phonemakers borrow a leaf from Samsung and do the same for its devices, even if it is only for the critical security updates.

An ambitious optimism will be to hope that Android phone makers strive to extend the support period for their devices seeing as our modern phones have become so powerful and remain capable several years into their lives.

NOTE: We have these and many more Samsung stories in our dedicated Samsung section.

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