There appears to be a bit of ensuing confusion following at least one AT&T user’s report that their Samsung Galaxy Note 8 flagship received an over the air (OTA) update to Android 8.0 (Oreo). Specifically, the user claims to have received that update despite the fact that AT&T and even Samsung have reportedly said the update is not quite ready to roll out yet via various official channels. Making matters worse, a moderator at Samsung’s official community forum for the handset said, in direct opposition to company statements, that the OTA is rolling out in select regions. The mod went on to say that the update would be rolling out everywhere “over the next few months.”
It’s worth noting that the moderator on Samsung’s boards actually posted his statement several weeks back, while the user in question claims to have been told by every authoritative source that the update wasn’t even scheduled yet. Moreover, this could be a case of a user trolling Galaxy Note 8 users, rather than a fluke on the part of either Samsung or AT&T. Samsung has been rolling out an update to its Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus handsets, so it could be that some code got jumbled somewhere or the user had a piece of software installed that resulted in the update arriving alongside those devices. However, that speculation doesn’t rule those scenarios out and it’s really not possible to pin down what’s going on without something official from Samsung. Whether or not even that could be trusted at this point – given the included image below – could be debatable. In all likeliness, there will be no such revelation.
In the meantime, sources say that the user has gone on to claim that the update works very well on the Galaxy Note 8. There are one or two applications that appear to load a bit slower than normal but battery performance is up if the user is to be believed. Aside from that, there are reported changes to the keyboard and to the number of settings that can be tweaked, while the cameras also seem faster and smoother. Unfortunately, the user also says that they can no longer connect to their Samsung Gear smartwatch since it hasn’t been updated yet.
