Samsung's latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow update schedule leaks: Note 5 in December, S6 in January, S4 is a no-go

Screw this! I love the Note series but this move is real crap! And its cuz of stuff like this I wanted to ditch my Note 3 (I'm still on a Note 3 and its a thing of beauty!) and get a Nexus this year. But even the Nexus phones disappointed this year and now I'm gonna stick to the Note 3 cuz hey Note 5 will be obselte next year. This move by Samsung is really bad just to force people to upgrade. If people love your phones, they will upgrade no matter what

Install the Note 5 ROM on your Note 3 and you will not regret it. It is heaps faster and you get all of the Note 5's features including the Edge Screen functionality. But if you like your Note 3 just the way it is then by all means enjoy what you have.

ya same with my tab s, cant even update games and apps cause of this issue.

No it isn't, you fool.

Sorry but this sucks. Long ago (when Android 4.0 ICS was out) Google and the OEMs had promised at least an 18 month update policy for their phones (not only their flagships actually). They are all breaking their promise quite regularly. The S5 is over 18 month old now, but it wasn't when Android 6.0 Marshmallow was released, so it should be eligible for the update. And a timely update, that is. April will be nearly 9 months from the time of Marshmallow release. Instead of OEMs getting better with updates, they're getting worse.

Nonsense. The official release date for Marshmallow was last month, at which point the S5 was exactly 18 months old. And even if this schedule is real, april next year would be 6 months after the release of Marshmallow. The S4 is now 31 months old, 30 at the time of Marshmallow release.

This is actually improving over old Samsung. 9 months since Dev Preview, not release. And would you rather have the old upgrades? HTC not releasing KitKat (or even 4.3) for the One X+. Samsung cancelling KK for the S3 because of a lack of RAM (ironic considering Project Svelte was specifically to reduce RAM req). LG, well being LG. It gets even worse the further back we go. Samsung delaying the Note's ICS upgrade and trying to spin it as a good thing. The Galaxy S (about as old the S5 is now at the time of 4.0's release) not getting it because of old TouchWiz. Sony's Xperia ion releasing on Android 2.3 a whole 7 months AFTER its release. And the ill-fated ICS upgrade for the Desire HD and Nexus One. I remember owning an LG Optimus One in 2011. It got all of 1 update, Gingerbread, and never got ICS. The phone was all of a year old at ICS's release, but it never got it. You could make the argument it was a budget device and all. But the first gen Moto G, which is in the price range of the LG OO at its launch, got Android 5.1 recently. You could say that's what should be expected of manufacturers and nothing special, but it is. Because our expectations are based on history, and for most budget devices, they're lucky to even get one update. As we start to reduce the performance gap between devices every generation, which not everyone is happy about (those that want tech to relentlessly march forward in performance), we're seeing an unintended benefit of it: updates are getting better, because there's no huge performance gap that's expected by Google when they write the next version of Android. If the performance is similar across devices, whether old or new, it might mean that soon we'll start seeing the 18-month window increase to 24, perhaps. April isn't that bad for the S5. It's quite an old phone, and it's already an improvement over last year. It took until June for the Note 4 to get Lollipop last year, and May for the S5 is most regions. If I actually owned an S5, I'd be pretty satisfied about April 2016. Although by then it's probably time to upgrade anyway.

You seem to remember quite well updates history but you are mixing up some things : hardware is different with each generation. Faster storage and/or ram, more efficient cpus. And OS code more fitting newer cpu architectures (not even talking about cpu's manufacturer support). To make it short, a simple Moto G can't be compared to an old "LG OO". Just go look at what devs are talking about XDA for all the phones you mentionned. It's like saying you have to get Win10 on your Pentium 4 2.26ghz / 2gb ram / ata100 hdd. Lollipop was a mess on S5 for many months, apparently it was the same on many other Galaxy handsets if you read comments, so people "who wasn't there" can only cry for late updates. For myself, i prefer Samsung to release something properly working when it'll be ready and without removing existing features.

I am not comparing the Moto G to the Optimus One today. I am comparing them what they were like 2 years into their life cycle - for the Moto G that's now, and for the One that would be 2012-2013. I'm comparing, if you wanted to use the computer analogy, that my 1990 PC can't run Windows XP, while my 2004 computer can run W10. Not saying that bc the 1990 PC can't run 10 it's immediately a bad device, bc nobody expects it to run 10, the same way I don't expect a $200 4 year old Android device to run Marshmallow. I just expect it to at least get more than one SW upgrade. And Lollipop on the S5 is still pretty much a mess if you're not on 5.1.1. And for a large number of owners, that's still very much the case, as only a few models ever got that update.

My bad, i misunderstood you completely while quick reading your post :) Anyway, there's a big difference between Samsung and most of Android manufacturers : even if not upgrading the OS version, they keep sending bugfix updates (especially on their flagships), at least for "popular countries". For example, i can count about 8 or 9 updates since i bought my S5 as soon as it was released 1.5 year ago. On my S6 Edge, i think it has been already my 4th or 5th since may 2015. I really can't say same honestly among all brands i have purchased.

Yep, even my S4 still gets these updates. I think it's already had 2 or 3 maintenance releases since Lollipop first came out, with a total of around 7 or 8 updates in its lifetime (although one infamously made the phone restart if it was running even ONLY slightly hotter than usual, and in my case that would be taking a call when playing FLAPPY BIRD). The Note 5 I use as my daily driver gets two or so a month, and so far every single one has offered a performance or battery boost. I'm not too sure about the S6; my mom uses one but I haven't been able to confirm how often it gets updates, and since most of these updates come just after its release, and she didn't buy the S6 until July or so, meanwhile I bought my Note on launch day in Singapore, which was basically the day after its announcement.