Samsung has been traditionally releasing the newest Galaxy S flagship with the latest version of Android before any other Galaxy smartphone.
The company maintained this long-standing tradition with Android 9 Pie and the Galaxy S10 earlier this year as well. However, it will no longer do so with Android 10 and Galaxy S11 next year. The T-Mobile variant of the newly released Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G is all set to ship with Android 10 out of the box.
T-Mobile rolled out its nationwide 5G network earlier this week and immediately started taking pre-orders for the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G. And according to the carrier’s official product page, the device will ship with Android 10 and One UI 2.0 out of the box, making it the first Samsung phone to do so.
The same has also been confirmed by Desmond Smith, Director of Creative Content and Social Media at T-Mobile, on Twitter.
The Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G costs $1,300 (or $36.12 per month for 36 months) on T-Mobile. The carrier is selling only the 12GB+256GB variant of the handset in Aura Glow and Aura Black colors. It expects to begin shipping the device on December 6.
In addition to the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G, T-Mobile is also selling the OnePlus 7T Pro 5G McLaren edition. Priced at $999 (or $37.50 per month for 24 months), this device also ships with Android 10 out of the box starting on December 7. Note that both of these devices only support the sub-6GHz low-band 5G network, and not the faster millimeter wave 5G network.
In case you’re wondering, the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G has been long available on Verizon. However, it runs Android 9 Pie and only supports the mmWave 5G network.
AT&T’s variant, meanwhile, should run the latest iteration of Android OS when it launches on December 17. Adding confusion, the AT&T Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G does not support mmWave.
Android 10 update for rest of the Galaxy Note 10 family
Of course, Samsung will eventually update all the members of the Galaxy Note 10 family to Android 10. However, that might not happen until next year. Samsung isn’t quite the fastest when it comes to rolling out software updates for its smartphones.
This has largely to do with the extensive range of smartphones it sells.
Having said that, the company has been doing consistently better in this regard over the last few years. Last year, Samsung didn’t push out the stable Android 9 Pie update to any of its devices until Christmas.
This year, however, it has already pushed the stable Android 10 update for the Galaxy S10 family. And according to the company’s official Android 10 update roadmap, the Galaxy Note 10 family is next in the pipeline. The latest Galaxy Note flagships will be getting the Android 10 update latest by January 2020.