Samsung has, over the past few, years consistently been at the forefront in the Android space, pushing updates to its Galaxy smartphones as early as possible while doing it for a longer period compared to a few other manufacturers who typically push one operating system update to their older phones and call it a day.
This can also be seen with the South Korean giant recently committing to offering its higher-end smartphones four generations of One UI and Android upgrades and five years of security patches. This long-term support for devices that are already sold guarantees they are useful for longer while maintaining the latest standards in terms of security and features.
In terms of bringing new OS upgrades to the public, Samsung obviously cannot compete with Pixel devices as they receive updates directly from the source, but the South Korean company is always consistently second after the Google-owned smartphones.
Last year, Samsung started its beta program for One UI 4 with Android 12 in September, but early reports suggest that the company wants to do even better this year by beginning the beta program for One UI 5 as early as July.
The 2021 beta program that started in September ultimately ended with a public release of One UI 4 in the middle of November. Theoretically, the company starting the beta program for One UI 5 in July will translate to the public release being significantly earlier than usual.
This timeline is in accordance with SamMobile‘s sources, who also note that the July release is not set in stone, and delays for whatever reason might crop up pushing the release to a later date or month.
In comparison to Google’s timeline for the OS release, a developer preview for Android 13 was released back in February. This will then be followed up by the first public beta program for Pixel phones later in the month.
If all goes to plan, Android 13 will reach platform stability in July, and the final release should then follow soon after. However, things going smoothly is not always a guarantee, as demonstrated last year by Android 12 which had a rocky beta program and was also rough in some areas during its release.
Any delay to its release will work in favour of Samsung, as its One UI 5 release will be brought much closer to Google’s release of Android 13 to eligible Pixel devices.
The timetable for Android 13’s release might also mean that the new foldables from Samsung i.e. the Galaxy Fold 4 and Flip 3 might not launch with One UI 5. Instead, the big screen devices will be running on Android 12L, a customized version of Android 12 specifically tuned to take advantage of the big screen estate found in these types of devices.
However, the update to Android 13 should soon be available to the new foldables shortly after their release. Samsung typically brings the updates to their latest flagships first, before working backwards and ensuring the older flagships and then the budget Galaxy smartphones also get the update as long as they are eligible for it.
