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Android 5.0 Lollipop for Galaxy S4 Mini canceled, not approved by Three UK

• Egon Kilin
• April 25th, 2015

Those of you who own a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini smartphone might want to consider upgrading their older device to a newer one, as Google and Samsung have officially confirmed that the mini handset will not be getting any OTA for Android 5.0 Lollipop in the future. At least that’s the deal for Three UK. According to company representatives for Three UK, the Galaxy S4 Mini Android 5.0 Lollipop update will not be sent out to users and has not been counted in for the future, because of “memory limitation”.

Even though the Galaxy S4 Mini is a rather acceptable smartphone, industry voices do think it’s rather outdated when it comes to hardware, design, software and everything in general. But what’s odd is that the Galaxy S4 Mini comes with 1.5 GB RAM, which Google said would be enough for handling Android 5.0 Lollipop. What they are referring to in fact is the 8 GB of internal storage, which might not be sufficient for Android 5.0 Lollipop. But it should be!

@barbs_paul Sorry for the delay in replying Paul. There's no plans for Lollipop for the S4 mini due to memory limitation. >DD

— ThreeUKSupport (@ThreeUKSupport) April 24, 2015

What’s odd is that the 2013 Moto G, which has far less RAM available and the same amount of ROM, can still run Android 5.0 Lollipop like a breeze. So what’s the deal with memory limitation in the case of the Galaxy S4 Mini for Three UK? Our hunch is TouchWiz. By including TouchWiz, which has to be included, Lollipop would take up considerably more space and RAM at the same time, which might be the reason why this older Samsung handset is not being treated to Lollipop. Oh and bloatware. It seems that Three UK have not approved the build for Lollipop.

Granted, the Galaxy S4 Mini is a few months older than the Moto G 2013, but when it comes to hardware and memory it is slightly superior. Why do you think Samsung and Three UK invoked memory limitations as the cause for not updating to Android 5.0 Lollipop? Following some Twitter conversations and company announcements, it seems that only the Three UK version of the Galaxy S4 Mini will skip the Lollipop update, as the Three Ireland version of the Galaxy S4 Mini is already getting the update as of today.