Category: Android Security Update

As expected, Google has released the February Android Security Bulletin today, highlighting the security vulnerabilities and fixes addressed since last month.  The company has also released the OTA updates for the February builds which means that owners of compatible Nexus and Pixel devices will get the update shortly.

Like last month, the February update consists of two distinct patches.  The first patch, dated February 1, deals with general vulnerabilities in Android Nougat while the second patch, dated February 5, is more specific to Nexus and Pixel devices.  Both patches have security fixes but the second patch deals with security patches with specific device drivers.  In all there are 35 fixes, 8 of which are considered critical and 18 are considered high priority.  You can read about all of them in the Bulletin release notes.

As expected, Google released the January Android Security Update patches yesterday for the Google Pixel phones and Nexus devices.  The full system images and the OTA images have been released to the Android Developer site already so users who have these devices should start seeing the OTA update come to their phones or tablets over the course of the next few days.  For those who want to manually flash, you can do so with these factory images.

The new build versions are as follows:

• Google Pixel XL – NMF26U or NMF26V (for Verizon owners)
• Google Pixel – NMF26U or NMF26V (for Verizon owners)
• Pixel C – N4F26I
• Nexus 6P – N4F26I and N4F26J
• Nexus 5X – N4F26I and N4F26J
• Nexus Player – NMF26R
• Nexus 9 (Wi-Fi) – NMF26R

Notably the Nexus 6 is not on this list nor is the Nexus 9 LTE version.  The Nexus 6 should be getting Nougat 7.1.1 next week but it is unclear why the Nexus 9 LTE did not get updates yet.

With the Android Security Update for November expected to be released later today, it looks like T-Mobile is already getting it out to their customers.  If you have a Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge on the carrier, there is an update out for you that brings the security patch up to this month.  T-Mobile has always been one of the better carriers when it comes to updates but with Samsung in particular, the manufacture has been slow to get updates out to carriers.  With the Galaxy S7 lineup, this seems to have changed as updates are coming at a far more consistent increment and much sooner after they are released from Google.

Just two days after their initial release, the Over-the-Air (OTA) updates for the September Android Security Update are starting to hit Nexus devices.  While they are sporadic at this early point, owners of Nexus devices should start looking for the updates to hit their devices over the course of the next week.  In my case, my Nexus 6 (running Marshmallow) was updated while my Nexus 9 (running Nougat) also received its update to the 09-06-2016 patch.

It should be noted that not all Nexus devices have received their Nougat update yet so it is possible that you could get a double OTA update over the course of the next week or two.