File this one under “What took so long?”. After the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge were updated to Android Oreo by all the major carriers here in the United States, the unlocked variant of the 2016 flagship devices remained on Android Nougat. Normally the unlocked phones get these major updates first but for whatever reason, Samsung never rolled it out. That, thankfully, is changing.
If you have an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge, the South Korean company has finally released the Android Oreo update to US owners. It is a hefty update at just under 1.5 GB so make sure you are on WiFi before you download it and that you have at least 50% of battery life left before installing it.
The update is more-or-less the same update that rolled out in the carrier versions of the update. That is, it contains the Samsung Experience 9 user experience that brings improvements and performance tweaks to the Android variant. The update does contain the April Android Security Update which is really dated at this point – but it is an update at least.
It remains unclear why it took so long for Samsung to roll out this update. Carrier variants of the S7 lineup got updated to Oreo nearly two months ago and normally unlocked phones get the update first. That said, this likely the last major update for the 2016 phone anyway as it is not expect that the S7s will get updated to Android P.
