With all of its flagship launches for 2020 done and dusted, Samsung is turning its attention to the Galaxy S21. The company has started firmware development for its next Galaxy S flagship over in the United States for all of the country's major carriers. As you would expect, the firmware is based on Android 11. The One UI version that debuts with the Galaxy S21 is likely to be 3.1, just like the Galaxy S20 series hit retail stores running One UI 2.1.
At this time, Samsung is only developing firmware for 5G-enabled Galaxy S21 models – the SM-G991U, SM-G996U, and SM-G998U, which will probably launch as the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and Galaxy S21 Ultra. It remains to be seen if Samsung will continue to make LTE variants of its top-of-the-line smartphones next year. The Korean giant is going to provide three major Android OS updates for flagships because consumers are holding on to their phones for longer, and going by that logic, having 5G connectivity as standard would make a lot more sense moving forward.
Naturally, it's too early to say what Samsung will end up doing, as we're still almost six months out from the Galaxy S21's official announcement. That's assuming Samsung isn't aiming for a premature launch, considering firmware development for the Galaxy S20 series didn't start nearly as early as it has for the Galaxy S21 trio. Even the reveal of the battery capacities for the Galaxy S21 and Galaxy S21+ came sooner than we expected, so it's certainly a possibility.
