Samsung has already begun pushing the Android 4.4.2 update to the Galaxy Note 3 in other countries, while it hasn’t yet made it’s way into the US. There was a pretty big issue with the update, however. It actually disabled a bunch of third-party accessories. Which Samsung quickly acknowledged after it was reported by many sites. They also said it would be fixed through another OTA. That update has now begun rolling out. According to Sammobile, it first started rolling out in Poland, and is also available in Russia as of right now.
The update is pretty small, but it also fixes the issue with apps not being able to write to the external storage on Android 4.4.2, which was more than likely a result of the change that Google made for SD cards in KitKat. This is currently only available for the Snapdragon 800 variant of the Galaxy Note 3, aka the SM-N9005.
While it’s great to see Samsung jumping and fixing this issue so quickly, I still don’t think this should have been an issue in the first place. Hopefully they’ll be making the update available in more regions very soon. Of course, some regions haven’t even gotten the first KitKat update yet. So we’re hopeful that when the update does come to the US for the carrier variants, that they’ll merge these two OTAs together. So those with the Galaxy Note 3 on Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or US Cellular won’t have to have some of their accessories disabled.
If you’re in Russia of Poland, the build number is N9005XXUENB3, and if you still haven’t gotten the update, you can head into your Settings menu, tap on About Device, then Software Update and do a manual check for the update. So far there’s no word as to how big the update is. But I’m betting it’s pretty small. If you’ve received the update, be sure to let us know how well it’s working out in the comments below.