Back in October, we got good clue of the Galaxy S7 Nougat update in the making when the device’s listing at GFXbench revealed it running Android 7.0 Samsung build, which was vindicated later when Samsung released the S7 7.0 update under its beta program in November. Now, we’re seeing the same thing happen for the Galaxy Note 5, which along with the Galaxy S6 is next in line for the Nougat update. Based on this, we can expect Samsung to rollout Note 5 Nougat update sometime in January, or early February 2017.

The GFXbench page for Note 5 basically lists out all Android versions the device has been tested with the benchmark. Now, it’s also showing Android 7.0 in the OS field, and OpenGL ES 3.2 in the OpenGL API field, meaning the device is running Nougat somewhere in the world — which should be Samsung software lab we guess.

Look, the key here is that device should be running ‘Android Samsung edition’ as otherwise, it could be CM14 or some other ROM too — although both with the Note 5 ad Galaxy S7, no such ROM is available either, sadly or not.

Samsung is right now busy gathering feedback from its Galaxy S7 users who are running beta version of its Android 7.0 update. The first Samsung Nougat build is expected to hit as an OTA in December, with 3rd week release looking more likely.