Most high-end and some mid-range devices have already received the Lollipop update but even though the next major Android update is just around the corner there are still many compatible devices that have yet to be updated to Lollipop. Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition is one such device and fortunately for those who own one the much awaited Android 5.1 Lollipop update is finally rolling out for this handset.
Google Play Edition handsets were launched a couple of years back, the idea was to take flagships from some major OEMs and offer them with stock Android software. They ranked below Nexus devices in the release roadmap so users would also receive software updates quickly.
Eventually Google lost interest in this program, there hasn’t been a new GPE device in ages and clearly the company doesn’t give much priority to rolling out new updates for existing Google Play Edition devices.
Nevertheless there is good news today, an over-the-air update has been rolled out today which bumps up the software version to LMY470, to be clear it’s Android 5.1 and not Android 5.1.1, so even though is update took its sweet time to arrive it’s still not the most recent publicly available version of Android.
The rollout has started a couple of hours back, it might take some time for the firmware to go live for all users.