Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra Android 11 update, security updates, and more

The leading smartphone manufacturer in the world, Samsung, has unveiled its S-series flagship devices for 2020. Loaded with features, the Galaxy S20, S20 Plus, and S20 Ultra have taken the smartphone world by storm and are already being deemed as the best devices of the year.

This piece, however, isn’t about the internals of the magnificent Galaxy S20 devices. Here, we’ll focus on the latest updates for the flagships and help you keep your device up to date. From monthly security updates to annual Android OS rollouts, watch this space to know all about the updates for your beloved S20.

As the updates for the S20 devices carry the same software version — the exception being the model number of the said devices — we’re using a unified table for the devices. The updates are denoted by the last four letters of the build numbers.

Here are the model numbers of all S20 handsets, including 5G variants:

Galaxy S20 Ultra – 5G enabled: SM-G988
Galaxy S20 Plus 5G: SM-G986
Galaxy S20 Plus LTE: SM-G985
Galaxy S20 5G: SM-G981
Galaxy S20: SM-G980

When will Galaxy S20 get Android 11 update?

In 2019, Samsung broke their software rollout record by releasing the stable Android 10-based One UI 2 build for the Galaxy S10 family on November 28th. As learned through the release of Android 11 Developer Preview, Google seems to have preponed the release of Android, this year, which should also push up Samsung’s timeline.

If Google actually ends up releasing Android 11 ahead of schedule, Samsung, too, could bump up the release date (for S20 handsets) to late October or early November 2020. It’s still very early to talk about release dates, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

One UI 3

As we all know, Samsung devices come with a custom skin on top of Google’s stock Android called the One UI. TouchWiz’s much-polished successor was first unveiled in 2018, coming with Android Pie underneath all the Samsung-y goodness. In November 2019, Samsung released the second iteration of the celebrated One UI called One UI 2. Based on Android 10, it further bolstered Samsung’s motto of creating a super user-friendly user interface.

Given that it’s only been three months since the official unveiling of One UI 2, it seems absurd to talk about Android 11 and One UI 3. However, thanks to Google’s unexpected announcement of Android 11 Developer Preview, we’re already deep in the speculation zone. Of course, we don’t have a release date for Android 11 yet, so, talking about a probable release date for One UI 3 would be quite premature. Still, if we had to take a guess, we’d put it between late October and early November.

Software update timeline

Global

Release date	Software version — Changelog
30 Apr 2020	ATD5 — May 2020 security patch Full software version: G980FXXS2ATD5 (S20) \| G985FXXS2ATD5 (S20 Plus) \| G985BXXS2ATD5 (S20 Ultra)
31 Mar 2020	ATCT — April 2020 security patch Full software version: G980FXXU1ATCT (S20) \| G985FXXU1ATCT (S20 Plus)
18 Mar 2020	ATCH — Improves camera performance, March 2020 security patch Full software version: G980FXXU1ATCH (S20) \| G985FXXU1ATCH (S20 Plus)
06 Mar 2020	ATC2 — Improves performance of camera and touch Full software version: G988NKSU1ATC2 (S20 Ultra)
25 Feb 2020	ATBR — March 2020 security patch, Camera quality improvement, Fixes an issue with the camera flash Full software version: G988NKSU1ATBR (S20 Ultra)

AT&T

Release date	Software version — Changelog
NA	NA

Sprint

Release date	Software version — Changelog
NA	NA

T-Mobile

Release date	Software version — Changelog
27 Mar 2020	ATCM — Camera autofocus fix, March 2020 security patch Full software version: G988USQU1ATCM (S20 Ultra)

Verizon

Release date	Software version — Changelog
07 Apr 2020	ATCT — April 2020 security patch Full software version: G988USQU1ATCT (S20 Ultra) \| G986USQU1ATCT (S20+ 5G)
21 Mar 2020	ATCH — March 2020 security patch Full software version: G988USQU1ATCH (S20 Ultra) \| G986USQU1ATCH (S20+ 5G)
06 Mar 2020	ATBN — February 2020 security patch