Nearly 10 months after the release of Android Oreo, it has finally made its way to the popular Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. It’s about time. The 9.7″ tablet, which was announced at Mobile World Congress back in February 2017, has to this point been running on Android Marshmallow here in the United States. The UK variant of the tablet was updated to Oreo earlier this month.
The update itself is just over 1.2GB in size and will bring you Oreo and the new Samsung Experience 9.0 user interface. You can expect about a 15 minute install time once you download the update to your Galaxy Tab S3 and a reboot is required.
As far as the included Android Security Update patch that is in this new build, that is the April 2018 patch. That’s good news but it would have been better to see the May patch given the June update will be out next week more than likely.
While the update is certainly welcomed, it speaks volumes to the upgrade problem facing Android in general. With little incentive to publish the updates or emphasis from Google themselves, manufacturers like Samsung have little reason to actually push out updates, even devices only a year old. Google is working hard to address this by changing the upgrade requirements for manufacturers going forward. That, however, really won’t be in full effect for another couple of years.
For now Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 owners, enjoy Oreo!
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