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Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop Release: 5 Things to Expect Now

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The Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop release is making substantial progress, so much progress in fact, that we continue to get tons of questions about the update and its roll out. Today, we want to fill you in on a few thing we think you should expect now from the Samsung Galaxy S5 Android 5.0 Lollipop update and its release in the U.S. and around the globe.

Samsung is rolling out its Galaxy Android 5.0 Lollipop updates in force to several top devices including the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4, and the Samsung Galaxy S5. The Galaxy S5 Lollipop release was the company’s first and it continues to make substantial progress as we push on through February deeper into the new year. That said, there’s still a long way to go.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop update has been rolling out since December. And since then, Samsung’s managed to get it out to a number of different variants in a number of different regions including here in the United States. The update represents the Galaxy S5’s first major Android update and as such, it delivers a host of new features, enhancements and fixes to owners of the current Galaxy S flagship.

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In the past couple of weeks, we’ve started to get a better read on Samsung’s plans. We’ve outlined many of these Galaxy S5 Lollipop details though we continue to get questions about the roll out and the update itself. While we don’t have all of the answers, we’re armed with enough information and enough history to offer another look at what we expect going forward from the Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop update and its roll out.

Today, we want to share an updated look at what we expect from the Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop in the days and weeks ahead, something that should provide some insight to those that are still stuck on Android 4.4 KitKat.

AT&T Galaxy S5 Lollipop & U.S. Cellular Galaxy S5 Lollipop

Samsung’s made significant strides here in the United States. Last week, the company pushed out the T-Mobile Galaxy S5 Lollipop update which joins the update’s from Sprint and Verizon. This has left owners of the two remaining major Galaxy S5 variants extremely antsy.

Owners of the AT&T and U.S. Cellular versions of the Galaxy S5 are still without Android 5.0 Lollipop and neither carrier has offered any details in regard to the roll outs. As we’ve noted many times, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. U.S. carriers are always very quiet about their plans and AT&T and U.S. Cellular Galaxy S5 users should expect these two carriers to remain quiet, up until the actual roll out dates.

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It’s extremely hard to predict Galaxy S5 Lollipop release dates in the United States, or anywhere for that matter, so we can’t provide you with any specific time frame for the roll outs. What we can tell you is that we typically see major U.S. carriers roll these updates out within a few weeks of each other. That was the case with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, Android 4.4 KitKat and we’re expecting something similar here from Android 5.0 Lollipop.

These updates may not arrive tomorrow and they might not arrive next week but we’d be shocked, shocked, if we got through the month of March without releases for both the AT&T and U.S. Cellular Galaxy S5 Lollipop updates. Again, we often see a bit of a delay between releases but it’s typically weeks, not months.

Smaller U.S. Carriers

Those of you on carriers like MetroPCS and Cricket should not expect to be next in line. Major carriers historically have gotten their updates out first before smaller regional and pre-paid carriers. There’s always a chance for some kind of anomaly but if we owned the Galaxy S5 on one of those carriers, we’d expect our updates to come a few days, or weeks, after the major Galaxy S5 Lollipop roll outs finish up.

Like their counterparts, smaller carriers tend to be reluctant to offer specific details regarding their roll outs until the day that they push out. We’ve seen tons of people asking questions about Android 5.0 Lollipop on social media and the result is always the same. Stop asking them questions, remain patient, and assume that your roll outs will arrive sometime in the next month or two.

International Roll Out to Quietly Continue

Slowly but surely, Samsung’s managed to get its international Galaxy S5 Lollipop roll out to a great number of people around the world. We expect the carrier’s push to continue into March and beyond without any official announcements.

To get a sense of what we mean, we suggest taking a look at SamMobile’s firmware section. There, you’ll notice that Samsung’s made substantial progress during the month of February without making many, if any, official roll out announcements for its international variants. We expect this trend to continue until the company’s pushed out Android 5.0 Lollipop to all of its international, unbranded devices.

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We expect March to be an extremely busy month for Samsung and its engineers so if you own one of the company’s international variants, you’ll want to keep an eye out for your upgrade.

More Galaxy S5 Lollipop Updates Soon, Others Far Off

We expect more carrier-branded Galaxy S5 Lollipop updates to roll out soon as well. French carrier SFR claims that it will roll out the Galaxy S5 Lollipop in late February and we’re just now entering that window. Canadian carrier Rogers says that it plans to push the software in February or March. To us, this means that a greater roll out in Europe and in Canada, is very, very close.

Of course, we don’t expect the Galaxy S5 Lollipop release to be close for everyone. Several carriers including Vodafone Australia, Optus and Telstra recently released their updated Android update schedules and surprisingly, the Galaxy S5 Lollipop update is nowhere to be found. They could simply be playing their cards close to their chest but our guess is that we’re still weeks, if not months away from releases in many regions, Australia included.

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Again, you should expect this update to take time. While Samsung’s great about some countries (USA, UK, others), it’s been horrible about releases in other parts of the world. We’d expect a few delays to impact Galaxy S5 Lollipop roll outs so you’ll want to remain vigilant as we press onward.

Galaxy S5 Lollipop Problems to Continue

Finally, expect complaints about Samsung Galaxy S5 Lollipop problems to continue as more people blindly upgrade to Samsung’s new software. As we’ve noted, the Galaxy S5 Lollipop update appears to have several problems including issues with battery life. U.S. Galaxy S5 users in particular have been extremely vocal about battery life problems and other more isolated issues like broken Wi-Fi, Bluetooth issues and more.

These problems aren’t just limited to the U.S. variants either. We’ve seen people in the international community complain about assorted issues after making the jump to Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Samsung will do its best to scrub out as many bugs as it can but you always assume risk when you download an Android update. Software updates are never perfect.

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We highly recommend taking a look at our fixes for Galaxy S5 Lollipop problems now so that you can commit them to memory before your Android 5.0 Lollipop update arrives. We also recommend doing some prep work before your Galaxy S5 Lollipop update arrives.

We expect carriers like Sprint and Verizon to roll out Android 5.0 Lollipop bug fix updates in the future but we would not expect them to be imminent. Weeks away at best. That means that you’ll need to be extremely proactive in the days in between.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. UKtechguy

    02/22/2015 at 9:42 am

    Also worth pointing out that older versions of a couple of apps can cause reboot loops if you upgrade to Lollipop and let Google restore your your apps as the version it might restore could be a KitKat version that causes problems with Lollipop. It’s a bit of a pain but it is safer to install the apps you want one by one from the Play store to ensure you get the latest version.

    The problem is not limited to the S5 (or Samsung) and is thought to be an OS call made by some older versions of apps that run in the background and cause Lollipo to force a reboot.

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