Bad news for older Galaxy owners: Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy SIII 3G and SIII Mini handsets won’t be receiving updates to their Android firmware, meaning that 4.4 KitKat won’t be available to the devices. The official statement from the company goes as follows:
“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.”
Of course those in the know about the subject matter at hand here may be raising their eyebrows more than a little. Contrary to Samsung’s statement, KitKat actually needs just 512MB minimum RAM to run, considerably less than the 1GB found in the SIII 3G and SIII Mini. Still, it’s probably true that those devices wouldn’t be able to run KitKat, and it’s probably something to do with the version of TouchWiz that they run.
TouchWiz is the UI which Samsung runs on top of the stock Android on their handsets, so it’s not too great a stretch to imagine that it takes a toll on RAM just as Android itself does. Perhaps, due to the dated version of it running on the older SIII’s, combining it with Android 4.4 would prove too much for those poor devices to handle. Either way, it’s bummer news for the owners. Maybe it’s time for an upgrade?
