Although the new Samsung Galaxy S7 series became the subject of numerous discussions over the past several weeks, and while the Korean tech giant is putting great emphasis on its latest flagships, this doesn’t mean that the Samsung Galaxy S6 lineup launched last year is any less relevant than it was at the beginning of 2016. In fact, over the course of the last few weeks the Samsung Galaxy S6 made the jump from Android 5.0 Lollipop to Android 6.0 Marshmallow in a handful of regions, and now another carrier variant – specifically T-Mobile’s – is getting ready to join the party.
Although Android 6.0 Marshmallow is not yet available on T-Mobile’s Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, owners of the aforementioned device(s) can expect the software update to hit their smartphones in the near future. The carrier’s update page reveals that the “Manufacturer Development” stage has been completed, and the same page now lists both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge as being in the “Testing” stages of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. During this stage, the two smartphones will go through the carrier’s certification process, and once the second step is complete, T-Mobile will begin the OTA (over-the-air) rollout and make the software package gradually available to Samsung Galaxy S6 owners. At the moment, there is no stable release timeframe, but assuming that the carrier won’t hit any snags during the Testing phase then the rollout should theoretically commence fairly soon.
The Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for T-Mobile’s Samsung Galaxy S6 series should include a handful of new features in both the operating system as well as the manufacturer’s proprietary TouchWiz UI. Marshmallow includes additions like Doze for better energy efficiency, along with Google Now on Tap and a new app permission manager. The new TouchWiz user interface also brings a handful of new features and a hidden option for DPI scaling, and in the case of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, the new UI should also give users the option to change the width of the curved edge panel from 260 pixels to 550 pixels to accommodate additional content. It’s worth noting that T-Mobile Poland has already released the update for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge last month and that Sprint did the same with its variants in the US a couple of weeks ago.