Android 4.1 Jelly Bean For Galaxy S III Roll Out Underway

It has only been a couple of months since Google announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, its latest platform update. It happens to be an incremental update which packs a decent set of new features. Only a handful of devices are compatible with Google’s new mobile platform update. It has now been confirmed that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for Samsung Galaxy S III has begun to roll out globally. The update will also be rolled out to other compatible Samsung smartphones in the near future.

Google Nexus 7 tablet was the first device to ship with Jelly Bean as the default operating system. Since then many Android devices have been left in the dark. This is primarily due to the fact that Android is a fragmented platform. There are many arguments for and against fragmentation of a platform, but it does come with a caveat of delayed over-the-air updates in the case of Android. For example Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which happens to be over an year old, has still not been rolled out for certain devices. This usually results in low adoption numbers of a new update, which is not exactly a good thing.

Samsung has officially confirmed that fifteen of its devices will be receiving Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update over-the-air soon, whereas the roll out for Galaxy S III has already begun. These devices are as follows: Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy S II, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Galaxy S Advance, Galaxy S II LTE, Galaxy Music, Galaxy Chat, Galaxy Ace 2, Galaxy Beam, Galaxy Ace Plus, Galaxy Mini II and the Galaxy S DUOS. The list does not mention Samsung Galaxy S III but it has already been confirmed by various sources that Jelly Bean roll out for this particular devices is already well underway. Samsung had previously said that they would be rolling out this update in October, they seem to have done it ahead of schedule. However the complete roll out process will definitely take some time as these updates are also subject to carrier reviews which can take a couple of weeks or even over a month.

If you have a carrier locked device, you will receive the update a bit late as compared to factory unlocked versions of the devices mentioned above. The reason being that factory unlocked ones receive the update directly from Samsung, whereas carrier locked devices receive the update after the carrier review has taken place and the carrier in question has added its exclusive set of apps.