Samsung confirms that the Galaxy S3 & S3 Mini will not be updated to Android KitKat

Bad news for owners of the Samsung Glaxy S3 & S3 Mini, the Korean Giant has officially confirmed that the two phones will not be receiving an update to Android KitKat.

The announcement was made in a statement released by the company’s UK branch, in response to a query from popular blog, SamMobile.

Here is what they had to say about the issue:

“In order to facilitate an effective upgrade on the Google platform, various hardware performances such as the memory (RAM, ROM, etc.), multi-tasking capabilities, and display must meet certain technical expectations. The Galaxy S3 and S3 mini 3G versions come equipped with 1GB RAM, which does not allow them to effectively support the platform upgrade. As a result of the Galaxy S3 and S3 mini 3G versions’ hardware limitation, they cannot effectively support the platform upgrade while continuing to provide the best consumer experience. Samsung has decided not to roll-out the KitKat upgrade to Galaxy S3 and S3 mini 3G versions, and the KitKat upgrade will be available to the Galaxy S3 LTE version as the device’s 2GB RAM is enough to support the platform upgrade.”

So it appears that the flagship phone from 2012 has finally reached the end of support from Samsung. The reason they gave, though quite bizarre, actually makes sense. The real reason why the devices will not handle KitKat is, TouchWiz. All Samsung phones come with a boatload of bloatware, tweaked and loaded bundled in to TouchWiz. While newer devices, use a lighter version of TW, older phones still stutter. Also, most OEMs have a policy of supporting their devices for upto 18 Months, and they released the Android 4.3 uupdate a few months back. Now that it is almost 24 months, since the phone was announced, it does not really surprise me that they cancelled the 4.4 update for the s3.

So is this truly the end of the road for the S3? I wouldn’t say that. The S3 has 1GB RAM, and a Quad Core processor, specs similar to the Moto G. So all you need is an OS minus the bloatware, aka Vanilla Android OS or aCustom ROM, to keep your phone updated to the latest version of Google’s OS. There are loads of these available at the XDA Developer Forums, just find one which suits your needs.