We recently received a trouble call that a customer’s Samsung Galaxy note was not working properly. She couldn’t download emails and the Tablet was making unusual sounds when the customer wasn’t doing anything. It was also exhibiting abnormal behaviour.
I brought the device back to our office and looked to see if the Tablet needed any Android software updates to be performed.
Sure enough the Tablet needed to do a 286MB update.
After finishing that I checked for updates again. There was another update and this time it was a whopping 980MB in size!
Even on my fast Internet connection it took a while.
After it was completed I once again checked and there was a third update that needed doing. This one was 200MB in size. After completing this I checked once more and and was relieved to see that the Tablet was now up to date.
The Tablet was also now behaving normally and emails started to download.
I can’t stress how important it is to let your devices do the updates. They will normally warn you that that there are impending updates. Before you do any updates please make sure that your device is plugged into the wall power because of the internal battery dies during the updates, it could render your expensive device another doorstop!
Granted many people are on data limiting Internet plans and if this applies to you, then please take your equipment to your local computer shop to let them do it.
These software or firmware updates are not the updates for the apps that you run on your device, but the Operating System software that runs the equipment itself. Depending on the device this could be an Android or IOS or MACOS or Windows update.
Firmware and software updates are released by the manufacturer and help keep your device safe by plugging exploit security holes and also adding new features. The same goes for your computers.