If you are a subscriber to the Sprint carrier network and own one of their Samsung Galaxy S5 handsets, there is a fresh Android 4.4.4 KitKat over the air update rolling out your way. Of course, over the air is long for OTA and it will be coming in as a system notification alerting you of its arrival. That won’t happen for those of you with root access and running a custom ROM or custom firmware as all notifications from the carriers are stopped in their tracks. However, if you get hold of the file manually you can update that way and return back to the stock software. Once back on the stock stuff, all future iterations come back the standard way. The new build comes with a revamped phone dialer, bug fixes namely the for the large Open SSL security scare, International VoWiFi support, a different HD Voice icon and more.
The new softwares build number is G900PVPU1ANI4 and it’s likely the last we see of the chocolate software coming for the S5 under the Sprint name. We know the final stage of KitKat has been doing the rounds for months and the galaxy range is often slower than most as they focused their attention on rolling lesser builds with the aim of fixing other known bugs instead of updating to the higher number 4.4.4 build.
Nevertheless, we are only a matter of weeks away from what will be the Android L 5.0 release and that is what everybody is waiting for. With it will come many new features and a way different UI. We haven’t seen any significant changes to the UI since Android 4.4.2 KitKat, but even that is nothing compared to what is coming.
Remember to complete the installation over the stable Home WiFi network to steer clear from the high data traffic. There is nobody using the home network and the bandwidth; therefore you will have a more stable connection that way, along with higher speeds. Higher traffic often results in instability and if it cuts out before completion there’s a chance it needs a full factory reset which results in data loss. It’s important to back up all data before updating the OS for that reason. Make copies of the phone contacts, SMS and MMS texts, market applications, audio and music files, video and pictures from your galleries.
Update: Over the past 24 hours some reports are suggesting that this is not underway yet. We haven’t gotten a hold of any Sprint representatives to confirm the staged rollout. However, you should understand that these do arrive to people in phases and you won’t see them coming at the same time. if you haven’t seen it yet, wait the week out. You can always navigate to Settings > About Device > Software Update > Check for Updates and take a look that way. We’ll update this story as it develops and try to work out if the build is still coming.