Android L 5.0 Update for Samsung Galaxy S5, Note 4, Note Edge Rumored for Release in Early 2015

Dec 22, 2014 01:05 PM EST

Rumors and speculation concerning Android Lollipop's inclusion on Samsung's Galaxy line of devices is running high as new info suggests that the Android operating system will skip 5.0 and go directly to 5.0.1 on the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5, and Galaxy Note Edge.

SamMobile took an exclusive look at the latest Lollipop patch on the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy S5 LTE-A, and the Galaxy Note Edge in a series of videos on the tech news site. 

Martin from SamMobile shows off the new changes with the 5.0.1 incremental update, but admits that there's not much to the patch. "Android 5.0.1 isn't a very huge upgrade over 5.0, but the 5.0.1 builds have a couple of new features, such as slow and fast motion video recording, and also fixes multiple bugs," the site says in its article. "The builds aren't fully finished; for example, Multi User support is present on the S5 LTE-A, but is currently missing on the Galaxy Note 4 and Note Edge. This suggest Samsung still has some work left to do, but given the pace at which the company has been making improvements in these early firmware, it should be ready to start rolling out these updates sometime next month."

The Galaxy LTE-A is a limited edition of the Galaxy S5 just for the Korean market. "As far as features and changes are concerned, we are looking at pretty much the same stuff that we saw on the Galaxy Note 3, Note 4, S4 and S5," SamMobile continued. "The build we're running works quite well and is very fluid, with the latter probably a result of that powerful Snapdragon 805 processor ticking away inside, in addition to the default optimization in Android 5.0."

As for a release date for Lollipop on these devices, SamMobile predicts that we'll see these coming to the retail market in "the coming weeks," while tech site Ubergizmo suggests that we'll see it for the Galaxy S5, S4, Note 4, and Note 3 "early next year."

As of right now, the only true release of Android Lollipop on a Samsung phone has been on the Samsung Galaxy S5 model SM-G900F in Poland. Although it's exclusive to Polish consumers right now, that model number can be used for most European countries. In fact, a French carrier has already released a schedule of updates showing the Galaxy series releasing this month.

But as we approach the end of the month and the end of the year in less than two weeks, it seems most likely that the "early 2015" rumors will hold the most truth. 

A leaked test build for the Sprint version of the Galaxy S5 allowed advanced user to manually update their Sprint devices to the Lollipop update last month, but more than anything else, that shows that Sprint is on the ball and in line with a Samsung Galaxy series release soon.

Either way, it looks like when the Galaxy models receive the latest update, it will go straight to Android Lollipop 5.0.1 and skip the original 5.0 altogether.