Samsung is bringing Android 12 to yet another pair of aging mid-rangers

by techlowdown · 18 May 2022

While some companies are still busy updating high-end phones (from 2020) to Google’s 2021-released Android version and others are inexplicably putting out new devices powered by 2020’s edition of the industry-leading OS, Samsung continues to do what it does best, absolutely crushing it on the software support front.

The world’s number one handset vendor is reportedly delivering stable Android 12 goodies with proprietary One UI 4.1 tweaks on top to not one but two different mid-end phones mere days after doing the same for the Galaxy A32, A32 5G, A42 5G, and A71 5G.

Unsurprisingly, at least one of these two devices is even humbler than all of the above, having made its commercial debut a little under a year ago with Android 11 pre-loaded on the software side of things, as well as a decidedly modest set of hardware specifications including a MediaTek Helio G80 processor and a 6.4-inch 90Hz AMOLED display with a resolution of 1600 x 720 pixels.

Bottom line, the 4G LTE-only Galaxy A22 is not a model you’d expect to get a lot of software support love (if it was made by a different company), occupying a lower place on the mobile industry’s food chain than, say, the OnePlus Nord N10 5G, which is set to live the rest of its life on Android 11.

This is a slightly higher-end but also older member of the very popular Galaxy A family, having seen daylight all the way back in the spring of 2020 running Android 10. Android 12 is thus its second (and almost certainly, final) big upgrade, which definitely raises the bar of expectations for many users in terms of system stability.

Both the Galaxy A41 and A22 seem to have kicked off their over-the-air Android 12 rollouts in Russia, with more regions undoubtedly set to follow soon, and both updates reportedly include April 2022 security patches, which is good but perhaps not ideal… in May 2022.