Tag: Galaxy S5 Active

With the March Android Security Update rolling out, February’s update is just now being rolled out by AT&T to some Samsung devices.  The update for the Galaxy Note 4, Note 5 and S5 Active are just now hitting customers. The updates themselves are quite small, under 200MB, and only contain the security update changes & fixes.  To put things into perspective, T-Mobile released the February Android Security Update for the Note 5 on their network on February 1st, the day the patch was released.

The challenge of upgrades and security patches is a well trodden road that we don’t need to visit yet again.  But it speaks volumes of the problem facing the platform when one carrier is releasing a security patch some 5 weeks after it was originally released.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5

The update for these devices shouldn’t take long to download given their size.  Once you have the download completed, your will need to reboot your device to apply the update which, all in, should take about 20 minutes to get done.  For reference, the build numbers for the updates are as follows:

• Galaxy Note 4 – MMB29M.N910AUCS2EPK4
• Galaxy Note 5 – MMB29K.N920AUCS4CQB2
• Galaxy S5 Active  – MMB29M.G870AUCS2DPK5

Unless you just absolutely have to do so, I strongly encourage readers to avoid carrier locked devices from any carrier.  Updates tend to be much slower from carriers while unlocked devices from manufactures, as a general rule, will get updates faster.  That doesn’t always hold 100% true but close enough.  Obviously devices from Google like the Pixel and Nexus phones get updates the quickest.

Back in May I posted that Samsung had released their Android Marshmallow update for the Galaxy S5.  AT&T, it seems, just now got around to releasing it.  During the same week that Google released Nougat, the US carrier released Marshmallow for the S5 and S5 Active on their network.  That’s a full three months after Samsung released and just shy of three months since Verizon released it for S5’s on their network.

Come on AT&T, get with the program.

If you have a Galaxy S5 or S5 Active, you should be seeing the update come to you via an OTA update.  The update is about 940MB so you will certainly want to be on Wi-Fi to download it.  Once you have it downloaded, the install including reboots should take about 30 minutes.  So all in, likely 45 minute to an hour to upgrade completely.