Samsung’s latest and greatest, the Galaxy S25 series, is finally here, after months of leaks and rumors detailing what to expect. The hardware was far from the focus of the launch event. Instead, Samsung certainly wants you to pay more attention to what it has going with the software—yep, just like the Google Pixel 9 event.
Speaking of software on the Galaxy S25 family, we’re going to see one notable change to how the phones receive software updates. Samsung’s latest devices will be its first-ever flagships to come with “seamless updates”. For some, that might be a major win; but for others, it’s certainly a downside.
Seamless Updates Find Their Way to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Family
Seamless updates aren’t a new thing in the Android market. They provide a way to have your smartphone install an update without needing to interrupt your use of the phone. So, instead of downloading the update and having to spend roughly five minutes in an unusable state, all you’ll need is a simple restart, and voila! You’ll find yourself in the new version of your operating system.
Seamless updates are able to work only when your phone’s storage is partitioned in a certain manner. That partitioning has to be done straight from the factory, and if not, that phone has no hope of getting seamless updates enabled.
Well, with the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, Samsung certainly partitioned the storage as needed, since these new devices support seamless updates. That makes them the very first Samsung flagships to have support for the feature. That wouldn’t be notable if not for the fact that Android introduced it in 2016—nearly 10 years ago. The first Samsung device to support the feature was the Galaxy A55, which launched only last year.
It’s Not All Upside When It Comes to Seamless Updates for Android
On paper, seamless updates seem like a dream come true for most users. A restart takes a minute tops, while a traditional update might take about five minutes, with larger OS updates taking even longer. Whether you’re using your phone for productivity purposes or simply for entertainment, there’s less downtime with seamless updates, at least in theory. However, the experience in actuality might be quite different.
For those who have been able to use seamless updates in the plenty of time that they’ve been available with other manufacturers, especially Pixels, the experience might not be as rosy as it seems they should be. The biggest issue is that if you want to install an Android update as quickly as possible, seamless updates aren’t the way to do that.
While it might take a max of 10 minutes to install an update the traditional way—sure, on a disabled phone—most users who have experienced seamless updates know they can take as much as an hour to install, with no way to forcefully speed things up. For the average person though, it’s fine because it means you can keep scrolling TikTok or sending texts. Let’s see how they’ll be received on Samsung’s first flagships.
