Samsung's 5.5 years old Galaxy S8 receives new firmware update

SEOUL: South Korean tech giant Samsung's Galaxy S8 and S8+, which launched in early 2017 to much acclaim, after a long career received their final update in May 2021. Turns out it wasn't the last one after all as the company has sent another update for the smartphone.

According to GSM Arena, the change log for firmware G95*FXXUCDVG4 says "GPS stability has been improved" and that's about it. That doesn't sound like enough to account for the 420MB download size, but if there are any other fixes, they weren't important enough to mention.

And this really is just a fix, the phone remains on Android 9 with a security patch from April 1 2021. Still, that's more than what can be expected from a phone that is now 5 and a half years old.

This GPS fix seems to be the same as the one sent out to Galaxy J7 phones in Asia. The J7 hails from the distant 2015. Also, these may not be the only old phones to be updated, reported GSM Arena.

GalaxyClub has reported that several other old phones are about to get an update - the Galaxy S7 from 2016 and even the Galaxy S6 from 2015. The more recent Galaxy S9 (2018) will of course also be updated as well.

None of these are on the official list of supported phones; the oldest S-series generation still getting regular updates is the Galaxy S10 from 2019, which is on a quarterly schedule (the S10 Lite is still on the monthly schedule).

Samsung recently announced that its flagships will receive extended support - 4 OS updates and 5 years of security patches, but that covers only the 2021 devices and newer ones, so the S21 series and up.

Older devices, including the S10 series, and those from the A and M series are getting 4 years of support, but again nothing as old as the S8, as per GSM Arena.