Do Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 support seamless updates?

Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 on July 10, and using Android’s developer tools, we discovered that the new foldables don’t support seamless updates.

It’s been almost a decade since Google introduced the seamless update feature for Android and its Pixel phones. In 2024, Samsung finally brought the feature to one of its phones.

Surprisingly, the Galaxy A55 was the big winner, and the A-series phone remained the only one on the market for many months to benefit from smooth updates. And it seems that this is not changing with the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6.

What are transparent updates and how do they work?

Phones that support the seamless update feature have two system/boot partitions. While they install new updates on one partition, you can continue using your phone on the other partition without interruption.

For regular (non-transparent) updates, the installation process requires users to restart their phone and wait for the update to complete, preventing them from using the phone for anything, even emergency calls, for a few minutes.

With seamless updates, new firmware can be installed in the background without interrupting the user. Once the new firmware is applied this way, users only need to restart their phone once and do not need to wait for long progress bars.

The story continues after the video…

Depending on how often you install updates on your phones, seamless updates may or may not seem like a big feature. Still, it’s a quality-of-life improvement, especially for devices that receive monthly security updates, which is true for most new mid- and high-end Galaxy smartphones.

The Fold 6 and Flip 6 don’t appear to support seamless updates

Unfortunately, the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 don’t support seamless updates, at least according to our initial testing.. However, the methods for testing whether seamless updates are supported don’t seem very reliable, so the only way to know for sure is when the new foldables receive their first software update.

The Galaxy A55, which supports seamless updates, displays a split progress bar when an update is downloading and installing. Devices that don’t support it, on the other hand, have a single progress bar. You can see the two compared in the image below: the one on the left is transparent, the one on the right is traditional.

While the Fold 6 and Flip 6 don’t support seamless updates out of the box, that won’t change going forward. This system for installing updates requires two system partitions, and adding support to a phone that doesn’t support seamless updates requires repartitioning the existing system partition, which can introduce a host of issues that Samsung simply doesn’t want to risk.

Seven years of Fold 6 and Flip 6 updates will likely settle in the old way

Samsung may have skipped seamless updates for its new flagships because the software that runs on flagship Galaxy smartphones and tablets tends to take up a lot of space (almost double) compared to mid-range and budget devices.

For example, the full firmware of the Galaxy A55 is around 8GB in size, while the firmwares of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy S24 Ultra are around 14GB and 16GB downloads, respectively.

However, with the Fold 6 and Flip 6 eligible for seven years of operating system and security upgrades, it’s a little disappointing that all of these upgrades are installed the old-fashioned way.

Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6 to go on sale July 24

The new foldable smartphones come with Android 14 and One UI 6.1.1, along with new Galaxy AI features. They go on sale on July 24, but pre-ordering them early can earn you some bonuses.