Early this year, Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 led the launch of the new Galaxy A 2017 series, which also includes the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3.
While it’s true the new Galaxy A 2017 family is one of the best in the mid-range smartphone category, be it in terms of specs and features or even the overall design, one thing that Samsung failed was releasing the phones with the old Android Marshmallow software out of the box – even with Nougat around.
Despite promising that the Galaxy A7 2017 and co will be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat sooner, it has taken Samsung months to start rolling out the OS to the device. As at the time of this writing, users of the phone in India are reporting that the OTA update to Nougat is rolling out. The OS is being rolled out to Samsung Galaxy A7 2017 with model number SM-A720F and weighs about 1.4GB.
Back in July, the Wi-Fi Alliance cleared the Galaxy A7 2017 and Galaxy A5 2017 with Nougat on board, confirming that it won’t be long before the OS is rolled out. This was indeed the case, but only those in Thailand confirmed to have received the OTA notifications as of last month. A month later, the same update is now rolling out to India, another market where smartphone business is booming.
The two markets have the same variant of the Galaxy A7 2017 with model number SM-A720F, which is also the same model you’ll find here in Kenya. In short, users of the A7 2017 can also expect to receive the OTA update to Nougat really soon. Alternatively, you can try checking the update manually via Settings>About phone, but only if you have this variant of the phone.
Even though the Galaxy A7 2017 was cleared by the Wi-Fi Alliance alongside the Galaxy A5 2017, there’s still no word on when the latter will be updated to Nougat. But seeing what’s happening with the A7, it’s possible the A5 and even the A3 will be joining the party really soon.
Still on the same aspect of Android 7.0 Nougat, Canada’s BlackBerry has confirmed that it will not roll out Android 7.0 Nougat to the BlackBerry Priv. This is a 2015 phone, the first from the company to come with Android OS. It came with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box and later received an update to Marshmallow. Sorry guys!
Update: Users of Samsung Galaxy A5 2017 are also reporting that Nougat is rolling out in India. Like the A7 2017, the Galaxy A5 2017 variant sold in India has model number SM-A520F and similarly, the update weighs about 1.4GB, so make sure you have a stable Wi-Fi connection to download it. If you have this model number on your A5 2017 and haven’t seen the OTA notification, this might be the time to head to Settings>About phone and do a manual check.
