Samsung introduces business Galaxy versions with four years of free updates

Samsung has announced that it will introduce Enterprise Editions of some of its existing smartphones. These phones are aimed at business users and will include four years of security and firmware updates at no additional cost.

Samsung reports that three smartphones have been made available as Enterprise Edition: the Galaxy S8, S9 and A8. The S9 will receive monthly security and firmware updates until March 2021 and quarterly thereafter until March 2022. The same schedule applies to the S8, with everything a year earlier. The A8 will be provided with monthly updates until January 2022.

Such a four-year support period is unlikely to be available for the regular consumer editions of the aforementioned smartphone models. A Samsung spokesperson said: “The consumer versions will be updated at least two years after the product introduction, and usually longer.”

With this, the spokesperson refers to a previous promise by Samsung to provide cheaper consumer models with updates at least two years after release. For high-end models, that is one year longer.

Other Samsung business functionality, such as Knox Configure, is also supported with the aforementioned smartphone models for a period of four years. This feature allows multiple devices to be managed and secured through a web portal. In addition, a feature is supported for four years to quickly make firmware available for paired devices.