“Samsung is now updating phones across Europe in one fell swoop: a good thing?”

Samsung adjusts its system for release and security updates. New devices now have a single firmware version for an entire European region rather than separate versions that vary from country to country. Does this mean phones are now updated faster? We explain.

Samsung’s new update strategy

Samsung is one of the smartphone manufacturers that offer the best update policy for their phones. You can read it from this Recent Research Androidworld where we discussed the policy of all trademarks in the Netherlands. However, something seems to have changed in the way Samsung updates in recent months, which has been noticed Galaxy Club employment.

We always used to Samsung release separate firmware update for each European country, you can see that in the country code or “CSC” in the firmware version. For the Netherlands, this code is “PHN”. Since last year, a number of phones with firmware have appeared that come without such a Dutch code, but with an “EUX” code. Examples include: Galaxy Z Fold3, Z Flip 3, Galaxy S21 FE and Galaxy A52 4G.

Standard European firmware now?

Samsung uses firmware with EUX in a large number of European countries and with new updates, smartphone users in all these countries receive an update notification almost simultaneously. This EUX code can now also be seen in the known firmware of upcoming Samsung phones from 2022. It relates to the following devices:

It’s still too early to draw any conclusions, but it looks like Samsung wants to roll out updates in more European countries at the same time. being an exception branded Samsung–Devices that you buy through your service provider, because they still come with modified firmware from Vodafone or T-Mobile.

What are the consequences?

It remains to be seen if this new approach is really useful for users and whether the new version and security updates will now be available more quickly and also contain fewer bugs. GalaxyClub noted that the Galaxy A52 4G with EUX firmware had to wait longer for the Android 12 update compared to the 5G variant with Dutch PHN code.

Samsung may be more careful with the EUX firmware because these updates reach more users instantly. Although the update process can be speeded up if all specific versions containing country codes will soon become a thing of the past. Samsung may want to strive for this, but time will tell.

Android 13 beta in the Netherlands?

We see a clear advantage with European software updates. The last Samsung Galaxy S21 devices of the past year were, like every year, the chosen phones with which Samsung tests the Android 12 beta. In many countries, S21 users were able to test the latest version of Android early, but, like every year, the devices received Dutch Can’t access the trial version. With the release of European firmware for the S22, that may change this year.

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