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Given that older Galaxy flagships only recently received One UI 3.0, we didn’t really expect Samsung to push the newer 3.1 build of the Galaxy S21 to those phones anytime soon. However, the company decided to pleasantly surprise its existing customers by giving the rollout an early kick-start. Right now, the Galaxy S20 FE is already getting its One UI 3.1 update, which leaves its more premium siblings from last year.
Many Galaxy S20 FE 5G owners from Europe took to Reddit earlier today to report that they had received a 1.7 GB update with One UI 3.1 and the February security patch. With this build, you can expect Google Discover integration on the home screen, Google Home device control in quick settings, and several new app video call effects, among others. Early adopters have noted that certain S21 features, such as Director’s View, have not been ported to the budget flagship.
SamMobile could confirm that the update has gone live in European markets so far, including the Baltic region, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and The United Kingdom. If you are in one of these countries with a Galaxy S20 FE 5G, you can go to the software updates section in the settings app to find the update notification.
It is worth noting that only the 5G model of the S20 FE will receive One UI 3.1 from now on, while we have no news on the 4G only variant. Since the update is already available for the Tab S7 / S7 + and now hits non-flagship phones, we’re hopeful that more Samsung handsets will be on the list sooner rather than later.
Update drawn
According to a report from SamMobile, Samsung has discontinued the One UI 3.1 update of the S20 FE within days of its release. We don’t have an official word on what exactly led to this decision, but a small subset of Reddit users faced performance issues, faster battery drain, and unreliable SMS notifications after installing the latest build.
Something similar happened last month when Samsung had to remove the Android 11 update from the Galaxy S10 due to a number of heating and camera issues, which took a few weeks to resolve. In the absence of a formal announcement from Samsung, you can expect a similar timeline in the case of the S20 FE as well.