Right now, Sprint and Samsung have begun to roll out Android 5.1.1 to the Galaxy Note 4 on Sprint’s network. Since the Galaxy Note 4 already had Android 5.0 Lollipop, this isn’t a huge update, but still one that many Sprint Galaxy note 4 users are going to love to have. It’s mostly a bug fixing update, with a few fixes for material design. However users won’t notice those UX changes as Samsung has their Touchwiz UI over top. Sprint has not yet posted a full changelog of the update, but we’ll be sure to update this post once it has been updated.
The update weighs in at about 615MB. So it’s not a small one, and we’d urge you to switch over to WiFi to update your device. Especially if you are not on Sprint’s unlimited plan anymore. There are lots of bugs being fixed in this one, and hopefully battery life will be back. We’ve had lots of reports that the Galaxy Note 4 has become very slow on Lollipop, and that battery life is just plain terrible, unfortunately.
You can grab this update from Sprint’s servers now. Just head into the Settings, tap on About Phone, then System Updates, and tap on “Check for Updates”. It should hopefully pull it down for you. But it’s also important to remember that these updates are usually slow rollouts. The biggest reason for that is to be sure that the update will not brick devices before it gets rolled out to everyone. That’s pretty important. You don’t want to download and install an update, only for it to brick your device. Talk about no fun.
Interesting that this update starts rolling out just a little over a week before Samsung’s Unpacked event. Normally these would be waiting until after the new device is up for sale. So that Samsung gives you a reason to upgrade to their latest and greatest. August 13th, Samsung is holding Unpacked in NYC for the Galaxy Note 5 and likely the Galaxy S6 Edge+. We will be there in NYC for this event and bringing you all the latest on everything announced.