14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for Vodafone Australia customers who own the Galaxy Note 3, as the carrier has finally started the rollout of the long-awaited Android 4.4.2 KitKat update for the phablet.
Originally launched with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box, the Galaxy Note 3 was promised an upgrade to KitKat, though Samsung did not offer an exact release date for the availability of the update.
That would have been hard to predict given the fact that these updates need to be cooked inside Samsung’s engineering laboratories and then tested by carriers.
This takes a lot of time and depending on how Samsung decided to address the upgrade requests coming from these carriers that want to offer their customers important updates fast, smartphone users may receive them sooner or later.
Unfortunately, Vodafone Australia customers were not among the first to receive the Android 4.4.2 KitKat for Galaxy Note 3, but they are definitely not the last.
It appears that it took the Australian carrier several days to test the latest KitKat build, which seems to have been free of bugs and ready for deployment.
This is why the network operator confirmed that beginning July 4, Samsung Galaxy Note 3 owners will start receive the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update.
According to Vodafone Australia, in the first 3 days only 30,000 Galaxy Note 3 smartphones will get the update, which will be randomly selected.
In the next several days, another 20% of all phablets will be selected per day for the update. In order to install it on your phone, you will need to manually check for it.
Keep in mind that the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update will be made available FOTA (firmware over the air), as well as via Samsung Kies desktop software.
However, depending on which method of upgrade you choose, the update file may be larger. So, the size of the update when completed via Kies is no less than 2.13GB, while the update file that comes FOTA is only around 500MB in size.
Aside from bumping the phone’s software to version Android 4.4.2 KitKat, the update also adds some bug fixes, new features and improvements.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 users who update to KitKat will notice that docking icons are now editable, so they can now edit Phone, Contacts, Messages icons. The Samsung applications have been updated and some NFC-related issues have been fixed.
The official changelog also mentions that other global UI improvements and bug fixes has been included in the update as well, along with some general performance and stability improvements.