An Android M update should be available next year

May 29, 2015 21:38 GMT  ·  By

The Galaxy Note 5 is Samsung's next flagship smartphone. It will be officially unveiled in late August or early September during IFA 2015 trade fair.

Just like each Samsung Galaxy S smartphone gets announced at Mobile World Congress in late February / early March, the Galaxy Note is revealed in fall.

Obviously, the Galaxy Note 5 won't go on sale in the same day it gets announced. Usually, Samsung makes its new Galaxy Note devices in early or mid-October. This usually coincides with the launch of a new Android operating system.

Google announces a new OS in May/June, but it only makes it available in fall, usually in October. So, a new Android operating system and a new Galaxy Note smartphone get released on the market around the same timeframe.

This basically makes it impossible for Samsung's Galaxy Note to ship with the latest version of Android. Google doesn't hand over final builds of Android until the OS is actually released on the market.

Hopefully, an Android M update will be available early next year

After that, each handset maker needs to optimize the new Android OS to work well on their own devices. Samsung's engineers need to work on implementing TouchWiz UI into Android M, which will take some time, at least a few weeks.

Beside Nexus and GPE (Google Play Edition) devices, few other smartphones are likely to receive Android M updates this year. Motorola might be able to release Android M updates later this year.

HTC is another possibility, but Samsung is no go. And for all the reasons mentioned above, there's no way that Samsung Galaxy Note 5 will ship with Android M operating system right out of the box.

The only thing we can hope is that Samsung Galaxy Note 5 will be among the first to receive the Android M update next year. Let me know your opinions in the comments section.