Unlocked Galaxy S10 and A50 get December security update in the US

Samsung has started rolling out the December 2019 security update for the unlocked Galaxy S10 series and A50 in the US. The Galaxy A50 was the first Samsung device to receive the latest monthly patch when the company kickstarted the rollout in Israel last week. It is now making the same update available for the US variants as well.

The Galaxy S10 lineup, on the other hand, is receiving the December security release as part of the Android 10 update in a few markets. However, the update is available only for the Exynos-powered Galaxy S10 models so far, leaving the Snapdragon versions in the US and other regions waiting. In the US, Samsung is now rolling out the December security patch directly instead of waiting for the Android 10 release. This could be an indirect confirmation that the Galaxy S10 lineup in the US may not receive the Android 10 update this month.

According to Samsung, the December 2019 SMR (Security Maintenance Release) includes fixes for six critical and over two dozen high and moderate-risk vulnerabilities in the Android OS. It also contains patches for 13 vulnerabilities that are specific to Galaxy devices. Given the impending release of Android 10, Samsung is unlikely to bring any new features to the Galaxy S10 and A50 through this release. The update for the latter, however, may fix the fingerprint issues reported earlier.

If you own any of these eligible devices and haven’t received the OTA notification yet, you can manually check for the update by going to Settings and tapping the Download updates manually option under the Software Update menu. If that doesn’t work and you are impatient to wait, you can download the latest firmware for your device from our database and manually flash it.

Naresh Nekkanti

Firmware Phone Galaxy A50 Galaxy S10 Galaxy S10 Plus Galaxy S10e United States