Samsung Flagships now receiving February security patches

Last year, Google made a promise to provide regular security updates to keep their major Nexus devices safe. Seeing the sense in this, Samsung took a similar oath, and has so far been good on their word. That means if you’ve got a device that was launched as a flagship smartphone, you can expect to get the latest security patch Over The Air sometime very soon.

Unfortunately, the whole “flagship” title is a little bit fluid. We’re not exactly sure what Samsung officially considers their flagships, but generally any high-end model from 2014 and beyond seems to fit the bill. We can look to past updates to get a good idea of which models should see this security patch. The Galaxy S4 didn’t make the cut, it seems, but Galaxy S5 and all variants of the Galaxy S6 did. The Note 4 and Note 5 are on the list, as are the Tab S and the Tab S2. If you’re running any of these devices, we’d be surprised if Samsung skipped you for this delivery.

The OTA we’re expecting will include everything Google listed on February’s bulletin, but it will also cover memory corruptions and buffer overflow attack vulnerabilities that are specific to Samsung. We also expect that a number of non-disclosed bugs or safety concerns will be patched and made public after the fact.

What are your thoughts regarding Samsung and Google’s commitment to maintaining the security of high end devices, even years down the road? In the comments below, let us know if there are any particular vulnerabilities or issues that you hope to see fixed in this update.

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