Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and the Galaxy S3 Mini variant are reportedly staying stranded on Android 4.3 and 4.2 Jelly Bean respectively, rather than upgrading to 4.4 KitKat as expected. And the reason why is to do with RAM.
This is specifically for the international variants, however, as carrier specific models for US networks Sprint and Verizon have already been upgraded to KitKat successfully. Samsung officially stated that the Galaxy S3 international model, the i9300, will not be upgraded further as it lacks sufficient RAM to “effectively support the platform upgrade while continuing to provide the best consumer experience.”
“Samsung has decided not to roll-out the KitKat upgrade to Galaxy S3 and S3 mini 3G versions, and the KitKat upgrade will be available to the Galaxy S3 LTE version as the device’s 2GB RAM is enough to support the platform upgrade,” the company said in a statement.
Apparently 1GB isn’t sufficient, despite the fact that Google specifically made KitKat with lower-end devices in mind and with support for as little as 512MB of RAM. Samsung already sells newer devices with 1GB or less that have KitKat pre-installed. The finger of suspicion points at Samsung’s somewhat hefty TouchWiz user interface which it bundles in with Android; although again, it already ships handsets with the same low memory that are capable of running this software, so we’re not entirely sure what’s going on here.
Android Headlines proposes an interesting theory, suggesting that “it looks like the 2GB of RAM put into American versions of the Galaxy S III to make up for the dual-core CPU, versus the quad-core in the i9300, has made all the difference when it comes to longevity of the device.”
But with all that said, perhaps we shouldn’t be too damning of Samsung. The company has a reputation for keeping devices up-to-date for much longer than many of its rivals (we’re looking at you, HTC) and the Galaxy S3 has gone from Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich all the way up to 4.3 Jelly Bean over quite a long period of time – on Android, pretty much the only manufacturer which outperforms here is Google itself on the Nexus line.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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