[Carrier OTA brings night mode] US Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S9 July update gets live, still no camera night mode

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on July 30, 2019) follows:

Recently we came to know about Samsung testing Android Q based One UI builds on the Galaxy S10 lineup. They are also rolling out the June security patch on the Sprint branded S10e/S10/S10+ with camera night mode feature.

The unusual delay in OTA availability on carrier locked phones is not a new saga. As a matter of fact, the global unlocked Galaxy S10 units already got July security update with various camera fixes, while the US models are still stuck with one month old patch level.

Similar to its younger sibling, the international Exynos powered Galaxy S9/S9+ also got July security patch a few days ago. The build (CSG8) also backported the Call & Message Continuity (CMC) feature from the S10 series.

The Galaxy S9 lineup already got various other features, like camera night mode and QR code scanning from their successor, but the preliminary reception of the camera stack changes was somehow mixed.

Nonetheless, the US Snapdragon 845 powered Galaxy S9 owners are not that much lucky. Both the carrier locked and unlocked models are lagging in terms of speedy software updates. However, this time the unlocked variant wins the race!

As you can see, the SM-G96XU1 (the value of X is ‘0’ in case of Galaxy S9 and ‘5’ in case of Galaxy S9+) AKA the carrier unlocked model is now getting the July 2019 security patches. The build number of this OTA is CSG4 – slightly older than the global update.

The changelog also warns about the inability to downgrade after installing this build. This is because Samsung included a new bootloader (v6) which prevents such downgrade attempts.

The size of the incremental update is merely 163 MB, and the camera improvements (including) or the Continuity feature couldn’t make their way in this build. Hopefully we will see them coming in upcoming monthly OTAs.

Are you looking forward to try out the camera night mode on your Galaxy S9/S9+? Let us know by commenting below.

The camera night mode finally arrives on US Galaxy S9/S9+ via Verizon (build CSGF), alongside July security patches.

T-Mobile is also pushing the security update as build CSGB, and night mode is there as well!

After Verizon, AT&T is rolling out the July security patch along with dedicated camera night mode for Galaxy Note 9 and S9 series. Details here.

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