Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra update timeline: May patch released!

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

AT&T

Sprint

T-Mobile

Verizon

US Unlocked

April security update

• April 07: Available for Verizon S20 Plus (G986U) and S20 Ultra (G988U)
• March 31: Available for S20 Global model

March security update

• March 27: Available for T-Mobile S20 Ultra
• March 22: Available for US Unlocked sets too
• March 21: Available for Verizon S20+ 5G and S20 Ultra
• Not yet available for carrier-locked variants
• Available for Global S20 and S20 Plus
• Released for Galaxy S20 Ultra in South Korea (Global)