The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones from Samsung may have only recently started reaching their owners, but the devices are already getting their first software updates. After T-Mobile pushed out some security patches to the handsets on Thursday, it is now the turn of the nation’s second largest wireless carrier, AT&T, to follow suit and roll out some unspecified “security improvements” to the two latest Samsung smartphones. Those expecting to get the March security update will, however be disappointed. The update only brings some general security improvements, as mentioned already, but none of that apparently has much to do with the scheduled security patches rolled out by Google on a monthly basis, so there’s no way to tell how critical the update actually is.
There’s no word on how big the download is either, but AT&T says that the whole process will take “several minutes” to complete. The T-Mobile update earlier this week was just a 41 MB download, but that doesn’t really mean that this one too will be a small download, although that might very well be the case. AT&T subscribers using either of the two devices should start getting their update notifications at any time now, but those wanting to manually check for the availability of the new software can do so by going over to the ‘Settings’ menu from the notification bar, then scrolling down to ‘About Device’, tapping on ‘Software Update’ and then choosing ‘Check for Updates’.
The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are the two latest smartphones from Samsung that were unveiled by the South Korean company earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress trade show at Barcelona, Spain. The devices have already been launched commercially in most markets around the world, and are currently available for purchase in the U.S. at most major online and offline outlets and through all the major carriers. While the Galaxy S7 has the smaller footprint of the two with a 5.1-inch display, the S7 Edge falls well and truly in the phablet category with a large 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen. However, the US versions of both devices are powered by the Snapdragon 820 MSM8996 chipset from Qualcomm and carry 4 GB of RAM each.