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Silly straightforward question: are updates to Samsung devices firmware regional, meaning that US may get an update earlier than South America or EU?

Also: who controls those updates? Do they depend on carrier when the device is tied to one?

Thanks a lot...really!

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Samsung's OTA updates are carrier-based, as usual. Kies updates are usually regional, but not particularly restricted; you can usually select a different region when installing Kies and get updates from there.

Kies updates are up to Samsung, though they would probably work with carriers on it to ensure it works well and whatnot. OTA updates are controlled by the carriers, though of course they rely on Samsung to actually produce the update. There's being some speculation that Google wants to break the carriers' tight control over this (and pricing, etc.) but in general Samsung et al. don't want to get on their bad side.

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  • Thanks again. So this means that if for some reason I find out that someone has a more recent update in the same region as mine, I can expect or at least have some hope that Kies will give me the update?
    – Bruno Brant
    Commented Feb 22, 2012 at 23:42
  • @Bruno Hard to say. It's certainly possible for an OTA to go out before a Kies update, I think usually they've been within a week though.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 0:39
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    What about WiFi-only devices, and the 'Update option under settings. Is that usually regional?
    – Julian Fondren
    Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 2:07
  • @JulianFondren Good question. I would assume it is and sends version info when checking for an update so that it can get the right one. Probably it depends on the particular device and manufacturer.
    – Matthew Read
    Commented Feb 23, 2012 at 18:51
  • @MatthewRead, one last question: is it possible to break the "regional lock" on my Samsung Galaxy S2? Or all I can do is manually flash the latest firmware?
    – Bruno Brant
    Commented Feb 26, 2012 at 21:55

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