On January 23, 2025, Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy S25 series. This generation of Samsung’s flagship devices comes with several noteworthy details worth exploring. One particularly intriguing aspect is Samsung’s adoption of an industry standard first introduced by Google eight years ago. Some speculate that this delayed adoption reflects Samsung’s generally conservative approach to integrating certain new technologies. Samsung Finally Embraces Seamless Updates
Samsung Finally Embraces Seamless Updates: Is This the Truth?
First, let’s clarify what this “industry standard” actually is. In simple terms, it refers to a feature Google introduced in 2016 and integrated into Android—known as “seamless updates.” As the name suggests, seamless updates allow users to install system updates in the background without shutting down or restarting their phones immediately. During the update process, users can continue using their devices as usual. Once the update is complete, there’s no urgent need to restart—users can reboot at their convenience. When the phone does restart, it automatically switches to the newly installed system.
At first glance, this sounds like a great feature, right? However, from a technical perspective, seamless updates work by creating two system partitions in the phone’s storage. One partition (Partition A) runs the current system, while the other (Partition B) serves as a hidden backup, ensuring a smooth transition between updates.
When the phone downloads a new system update, it is directly unpacked and installed in Partition B. The user’s settings and app data from the original Partition A are then applied to the updated system. Upon restarting, the phone switches the default system partition to B, making the updated system immediately available. Meanwhile, the original Partition A becomes a hidden backup, ready to be used for the next system update.
Seamless Updates Offer Benefits, but at a Cost
While seamless updates have clear advantages, they have a significant trade-off—high storage costs.
Understanding how seamless updates work makes their primary drawback apparent: they require an extra system partition, taking up storage space equivalent to the entire operating system. This reserved space is inaccessible to users.
When Google introduced this technology into Android’s system code as a “default feature” eight years ago, most smartphones had just 16GB or 32GB of storage. At the time, allocating several gigabytes of user-inaccessible space for seamless updates would have been a major drawback, making the feature impractical for many devices.
Why Did Samsung Finally Adopt Seamless Updates?
From this perspective, some might assume that Samsung’s decision to support seamless updates in the Galaxy S25 series is simply a result of increased smartphone storage. With modern devices offering larger capacities, is Samsung now willing to “sacrifice” some space for faster updates?
In reality, that’s only part of the story. While most smartphones in 2025 now start with 256GB of storage, the size of operating systems has also grown significantly. Compared to previous generations, system firmware and system data on flagship models can easily consume over 20GB of storage, with some models reaching as high as 40 GB. Even with larger storage capacities, the trade-off for seamless updates is still a relevant concern.
The Future of Smartphone Storage and Samsung’s True Intentions
It’s clear that future smartphones—especially flagship models—will incorporate increasingly advanced edge AI models and even more sophisticated intelligent systems. As a result, the storage required for system firmware and related data is expected to continue growing.
Was Samsung’s Adoption of Seamless Updates Truly Intentional?
Given this trend, it’s worth questioning whether allocating dozens of gigabytes solely for a “seamless update” genuinely benefits users. After all, system updates typically occur just once a month, and the primary advantage is reducing restart time by a few minutes—or, at most, a dozen minutes. Is this trade-off really justified?
Samsung’s decision to implement seamless updates may not be driven purely by user convenience but by external factors or industry pressures. The true motive behind this change is still up for debate.
Of course, from this perspective, we must admit that Samsung has been “resisting” the use of seamless updates in the past few years. In fact, it is not necessarily because they cannot handle the relevant adaptation but more likely because of the consideration of increasing the actual available storage space of the phone. Why, in 2025, did Samsung decide to embrace this old feature that was released 8 years ago on the Galaxy S25 series? Perhaps we have to ask Google, which now has in-depth technical cooperation with them in many aspects.
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