Android 4.3 Update For Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4, Note 2 Coming Next Month

Samsung will be bringing Android 4.3 to some of its older devices in October, according to a company representative. The announcement was made during the unveiling of the Galaxy Gear smart watch, which is only compatible with the Android 4.3-based Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) at launch due to the requirements for Bluetooth 4.0 LE.

The original Galaxy Note was quite late in being updated to Android 4.1 from its shipping version of Ice Cream Sandwich, and doesn’t look to be receiving any future updates. So too will the Galaxy S2 remain on Jelly Bean 4.1, since both devices lack the hardware capable of being used with the Gear (among other resource-intensive reasons).

It was announced in July that the Galaxy S3 and Note II would skip Android 4.2 for a “future Android version,” and now that we know it is Android 4.3, we have to wait to see if Samsung follows through with its promise.

The Galaxy S4, which was launched earlier this year, shipped with Android 4.2.2 and the update to Android 4.3 should be hassle free considering that the Google Play Edition of the Galaxy S4 is already running the latest version.

Android 4.3 is still a variant of Android Jelly Bean (along with 4.1 and 4.2) but it does bring some interesting new features including restricted profiles (a much better way to handle multiple users on the same tablet), Bluetooth 4.0 low-energy support,  OpenGL 3.0 support, a T9 dialer and improvements to the notification system.

Tejas Thakker