Owners of the Samsung Galaxy J7 and a few other mid-range devices from the company will no longer have to resort to custom ROMs in order to get Android 5.1.1, as Samsung have started deploying the update officially. Currently, the release is limited to India, but it’s reported to be coming to the US pretty soon, so those who’ve been waiting to get the benefits of 5.1.1 will not have to wait much longer.
More specifically, the update is targeted for the Galaxy J7 and Galaxy J5, both of which have been enjoying a lot of popularity in their respective market segment. Samsung have been paying a lot of attention to their flagships, but also to the lower brackets of their market, so we can expect even more activity on that front in the future.
Reports indicate that the update actually works quite well on the devices and it should bring some significant improvements to the use experience of their owners. Most notably, the battery life seems to have gotten a pretty big increase as a result of some optimizations in the operating system, and some experts have been testing the new performance in detail, claiming that the device is practically idle during the night in terms of battery usage.
The situation about the J1 seems a bit unclear at the moment, and even though the device is also rumored to be getting the update through the official OTA channel, we don’t know when that might happen. However, there are already custom ROMs available for it which bring it up to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, and the installation procedure is pretty standard.
Users who’ve flashed an Android device previously will not have to worry about anything as long as they take the necessary precautions, and of course the most important thing is to make a full backup to prevent the loss of data. In addition, flashing a custom ROM might pose some risks with regards to post-purchase support, but Android is generally more relaxed in this regard and users shouldn’t worry too much.
Rooting the device also brings various benefits to the user that are not normally available with a regular phone with the stock operating system. It generally makes the experience more free and unrestricted, especially for users who like to play with special apps and get the most from their device.
In fact, some users have decided to completely skip the official update channels in favor of custom ROMs like CyanogenMOD, which offer various improvements to the operating system and make it much more stable, lightweight and even more secure than the stock Android. The knowledge barrier for flashing a custom ROM to a device has been getting lower and lower too, with detailed guides all over the Internet explaining how to root a device and how to deploy the relevant version of Android to it. It’s a relatively safe procedure at this point without any of the risks that it carried before.
It’s interesting to note that Samsung seem to be paying more and more attention to their mid-range devices lately, unlike before when they were almost exclusively focused on flagships. The company seems to be realizing the importance of covering the market evenly instead of concentrating on one area of their operations, and they might end up retaining their position as one of the biggest players on the smartphone market if they continue this attitude.