Samsung has released details of its first security update for 2025, which combines the latest Android fixes (also just confirmed) with a raft of its own. Nothing unusual so far — and thankfully no urgent attack warnings so far either.
But what this will highlight is the usual slow burn rollout as devices wait their turn, lining up by model, region and carrier through most of the rest of the month. This frustrates users, who watch Apple’s everyone, everywhere updates with some envy.
Such is the pain in. this process, that December’s security fixes are still rolling out to some devices, and there’s no reason to think this will change. At least not for owners of flagships still on the monthly schedule — that means the S21, S22, S23 and of course the S24 which is due to be displaced by the S25 this month.
And that S25 launch has serious implications for this monthly security update. Samsung is expected to introduce seamless updates for the first time with its newest flagship, as well as launching Android 15 through One UI 7. Seamless updates catch Galaxy up with something that has been available to Pixels for years. An A/B system, whereby devices don’t need a long reset to update new firmware. The download is done in the background and then a simple reboot enables the new software.
Android 15 also brings a huge swathe of new security advances — some from Google but others from Samsung, which has now set its stall out to catch iPhone (or at least narrow the gap) in the security and privacy stakes, as well as advancing its Galaxy AI — it hopes beyond anything Apple Intelligence can yet offer.
The standouts from January’s update are five critical updates to Android’s core system, “the most severe” of which, Google warns, “could lead to remote (proximal/adjacent) code execution with no additional execution privileges needed.” All other fixes of note — both for Android and Samsung — are high severity, but can still lead to exploitation if discovered and compromised before patching.
Although Samsung hasn’t issued any critical updates of its own this month, it does warn that “some items included in the Samsung Android Security Update cannot be disclosed at this time,” which could mean more serious notifications to come.
January’s update will come first to those S24s running the One UI 7 beta, with flagships expected to see the release very shortly—likely starting with the S24 first. Meanwhile, all eyes on the Galaxy S25 expected to launch one or around Jan. 22.
