Adding fuel to the “Android upgrades are broken” fire, AT&T has finally released the Android Lollipop 5.1.1 update for their exclusive device, the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active. The 640MB update is rolling out to AT&T customers with the device starting today and should hit yours over the course of the next few days. The update comes just a few weeks after the Galaxy S5 on AT&T receive the update while countless other devices are already receiving the Android Marshmallow 6.0 update.
Galaxy S5 Active users will need to make sure that they are on Wi-Fi to download and install this hefty update from AT&T which contains all the fixes and improvements of Lollipop 5.1.1 along with all of the AT&T apps that they include in the build.
While it is good to see AT&T finally put this build out to S5 Active users, it is appalling that took so long. There are a lot of security fixes and overall user improvements from Lollipop 5.1 and 5.1.1 which has been denied to these users. It underlines the overall problem Google faces with Android updates when carriers are involved. Windows Phone has in the past faced this same problem with only Apple being able to control updates to their devices. With more manufactures of Android devices selling unlocked devices directly to customers (HTC, Samsung, Nexus, etc) this may become less and less of an issue but is still a thorny problem for devices that are just a year old.
