The Samsung Galaxy S III LTE (GT-l9305) Android 4.3 Jelly Bean update is now rolling OTA

Samsung's Galaxy S III may have lost its maddening appeal for customers now that it belongs to the older generation of phones, yet its installed base is quite respectable. If you number among the millions who picked up the 4G LTE version (GT-l9305), then today is a time for celebration, as it marks the beginning of the OTA roll out phase of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

Since this actually means that existing S III units will leapfrog Android 4.2, you can imagine that quite a few new goodies are coming our way. Unfortunately, Samsung doesn't really subscribe into all that changelogs-type-business, so there's no official list, though the good folks over at SamMobile have compiled a pretty extensive list of what they've found to be changed. Perhaps most important are the cosmetic changes – the UI has been updated, and now appropriate the Galaxy S4/Note 3 theme elements – and the addition of garbage collection with fstrim support. TRIM helps a great deal when aging devices (like the S III) are concerned, as these that suffer poor storage I/O performance after a while. In other words, expect some tangible performance boost with this update. Check out the full list below.


It's likely that only a few of you have already received the update prompt just yet, however. You could try to force an update check manually, by going into Settings > More > About Device > Software update > Update, but you'll probably have to wait a while. Moreover, if you're locked to a carrier, it will take even longer as your service providers needs to do some work as well. Either way, you can keep track of which countries/carriers have started receiving the new firmware with SamMobile's ingenious tool right below.

via: SamMobile