Samsung: Galaxy Note II, Galaxy S3 won’t get Lollipop

The Galaxy S3 will miss out on Lollipop.

The Galaxy S3 will miss out on Lollipop.

Samsung today delivered the news all Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S3 owners have been dreading: the South Korean company will not be updating these devices to Android 5.0 Lollipop. That means both handsets will remain on KitKat without the help of unofficial, third-party ROMs.

The news comes almost five months after Samsung Poland reassured fans that the Galaxy Note II would receive a Lollipop update. It’s unclear whether that was simply misinformation, or whether the company has since been testing the software and reversed its initial decision.

Either way, it’s bad news for both the Note II, and the Galaxy S3, which was released five months earlier.

“We don’t like to give out bad news,” Samsung U.K. told one fan on Twitter, “but the Note 2 and the Galaxy S3 won’t be receiving the Lollipop update.”

The Galaxy S3 is one of Samsung’s best-selling smartphones to date, with more than 80 million units sold worldwide. A significant number of those buyers will still be holding onto the device, and they will undoubtedly be disappointed it won’t be getting Lollipop.

But now that the Galaxy S3 is more than three years old, it’s not too surprising that Samsung has made this decision. Most Android makers promise updates for a minimum of two years, and it’s not too often we see major releases beyond that point.