Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge May Be Updated to Android 7.1.1 Nougat Directly, Skipping Android 7.0

Last month, Samsung officially rolled out its 'Galaxy Beta Program', which allowed users of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge to test Android 7.0 Nougat on their devices. Now, it looks like the South Korean manufacturer might skip the official rollout of Android 7.0 Nougat update and directly bump up the smartphones to Android 7.1.1 Nougat - which was released to Nexus and Pixel devices last week - instead.

In response to a user query, Samsung has confirmed that it will be updating Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge smartphones directly to Android 7.1.1 Nougat instead of first updating them to version 7.0.

The Android 7.1.1 Nougat update brings along new emojis that reflect gender equality, support from GIF images right from the keyboard, and app shortcuts right from the home screen. Users will be able to get access to actions regarding the app just by long-pressing the icon.

Earlier this month, Google released the Google Play distribution data for the seven-day period ending December 5, which showed that Android 7.0 Nougat is now running on 0.4 percent of active Android devices. This marked a relatively minor 0.1 percent improvement from the data shared a month ago by the search giant.

It will be interesting to see how the adoption rate of the latest version of Android is impacted by Nougat's availability on Galaxy S7 smartphones as the numbers seem to be struggling as of now. Even though most manufacturers are yet to roll out the Nougat update to their smartphones, the start doesn't seem to be particularly promising.