Over a month after Samsung began the stable rollout of their refreshed, Android Pie-based One UI software to carrier-locked S9 and S9+ devices, the update is now finally showing up for the unlocked variants in the US and elsewhere also.
Samsung announced that their Android Pie-based updates would feature a redesign in early November with a smoother, more consistent, and more intuitive styling in ‘One UI‘, and immediately made betas of this new update available for their Galaxy S9 lineup, and the Note 9 a month later. After multiple updates to the beta, the Korean conglomerate then released the stable build to carrier-locked devices in early January, and now the update is finally arriving for unlocked devices worldwide.
This continues an odd and disappointing trend Samsung has followed for the last few years where unlocked devices receive updates later than carrier-locked ones despite featuring cleaner software. It really is disappointing as January was the earliest Samsung had released a stable Android update in years, despite also sporting a redesign, so delays for variants put somewhat of a damper on that success.
I received the Android Pie software update last Sunday overnight, I awoke Monday morning to find the notification on my Samsung Galaxy S9 SM-G960UI.