Verizon is currently updating four smartphones from 2014 with the January 2017 security patch. This includes the Samsung Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge and the LG G4. It’s worth noting that Sprint began pushing out this same update to the Galaxy S5 yesterday. These four devices likely won’t be seeing an official update to Android 7.0 Nougat, and will stick to Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but it is great to see them getting the latest security patches, so that those still using these devices can be safe when using their smartphones.
The largest wireless carrier in the US has updated their software pages for all four devices, and the changelog is pretty bare. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other stability improvements in these updates, but they are likely pretty minimal. Since these are devices that are no longer getting OS upgrades, you likely won’t be seeing any more updates that improve the usability of the device. Which is a bit unfortunate, but considering these phones are going on 3 years old, it’s not too surprising. Most companies have trouble keeping up with their devices for two years, never mind three. It’s also likely that this will be one of the last security updates that these devices see, as OEMs are only going to keep pushing out security patches for so long.
If you do own the LG G4, Samsung Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4, or Galaxy Note Edge, you should be seeing the update available on your device right now. Simply head into Settings > About Phone > Software Update and tap on “Check for Update” and you should be able to pull down the update for your device. They are likely fairly small updates, around 200MB or so, but it’s still a good idea to do this on WiFi, especially if you don’t have unlimited data on Verizon. The update should take around 10 minutes to install, so this might be something you’ll want to do after you get home from work. You can hit up the source link below for more information on this update.