Samsung S20 series beats Pixels again, starts receiving February security patches in January

This is certainly not the first time Samsung has beaten Google to the punch. In the absence of Essential, it looks like Samsung is ready to take that second spot.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. (HT Tech)

Samsung's quick pace of rolling out the Android 11 upgrade to its long roster of devices has left other manufacturers behind, but that hasn't stopped the company from sending out regular security updates to all of its devices. Samsung is now rolling out the February Android security update to the Galaxy S20 series, before Google's Pixel phones.

There's a huge Software Update for your Galaxy S20 Series Device. Updated versions of Biometrics, camera and more.

Video: https://t.co/frrD4IyvPk#Samsung #GalaxyS20 @SamsungMobileUS pic.twitter.com/Jhf6g6PTYM

— Jimmy Is Promo (@jimmyispromo) January 25, 2021

The update doesn't just contain the latest Android security patches, though. YouTube content creator JimmyIsPromo tweeted that the update also improves biometrics, as well as the camera. Considering that the camera quality on the S20 series was already remarkable, this is definitely good news for S20, S20 Plus and S20 Ultra users.

Samsung is slowly building up a reputation for being one of the fastest manufacturers to update a large number of devices. The S10 and Note 10 devices got the November update in October 2019, while the company pushed out the December update to the Note 10 and the Note 9 while it was still November, beating the Pixels at their own game yet again.

Samsung Galaxy s20 software update - first in 2021 pic.twitter.com/OXhOmixOq0

— gaurav roy (@gROY_ALS) January 25, 2021

The update has been rolling out in the last 48 hours to countries in Europe including Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania, the United Kingdom and Spain, according to this report. However, Indian users have also tweeted images of their S20 devices receiving the monthly update, so heading over to the settings menu and hitting the update button a couple of times might be worth a shot.

Galaxy S20 series users who do update should note that while this isn't a major update, it's good to have a backup of your data on your computer or an external storage device, just in case things go wrong. The update also upgrades the device's bootloader to version 6, so you won't be able to switch back to an older build, thanks to Android's Anti-Rollback (ARB) security feature.