Lately we have been bringing readers plenty of news about various devices receiving the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update. The Samsung Galaxy S3 (S III) status regarding Jelly Bean is something we get asked about a lot, as although the rollout has started in several regions it has taken an awful long time to make it to the US. The latest we know on the Samsung Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean update is that Sprint has now started pushing out the update and it could possibly be the turn of AT&T and then Verizon next.
A few weeks ago we talked about the delays from Samsung and the various US carriers of the Galaxy S3 in pushing out Jelly Bean to its customers and noted this was causing US customers a certain amount of frustration. Although Samsung had originally said the update would come in September we then heard further news that for the US at least it may not arrive for some months and possibly not until 2013. Oddly this was said to be with the exception of Sprint and lo and behold two days ago we heard rumors that the Jelly Bean update could be arriving for the Galaxy S3 that very day.
Happily for Sprint owners this turned out to be correct and Sprint issued an official statement to say they were the first US wireless carrier to offer the update. The over-the-air update continues to roll out right now but where does that leave owners of the Galaxy S3 on the other major US carriers, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular? We would imagine that as Sprint is now pushing out Jelly Bean it will shortly come to the other carriers but Pop Herald has an interesting theory on this.
If you check out the official Samsung page regarding Jelly Bean updates for its devices (here) you’ll see that Sprint is at the top of the list and now for the Galaxy S3 it reads that the ‘Jelly Bean update is available.’ Below this the update status for all the other carriers is listed as simply ‘coming soon’ and the carriers in order are AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and US Cellular. Pop Herald makes an observation that as Sprint is at the top of the list then it may be AT&T followed by Verizon that receive Jelly Bean next, possibly next month. This would then mean that T-Mobile would be one of the last to push out Jelly Bean followed finally by U.S. Cellular.
Of course we can’t say whether the Samsung page can be interpreted this way but it is interesting that the list isn’t in alphabetical order by carrier as you might expect, so Pop Herald’s theory is at least worth thinking about. We’ll certainly be keeping our noses to the ground on this one and as we heard about the Sprint rollout just before it started we hope to be able to bring you news as the other carriers get ready to start their rollouts of Jelly Bean, so do check back with us from time to time.
Hopefully we’ll be hearing more very soon but in the meantime we’d like to hear from readers about the Jelly Bean update for the Galaxy S3. Are you an AT&T or Verizon customer hoping the above theory holds water? Maybe you can’t understand why Sprint owners of the device have already received Jelly Bean while you’re still waiting? Let us know how you feel about this by sending your comments.