Newsletter
Earlier this week, Samsung released the January 2024 security patch for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4. Those were the first two devices to pick up the latest security update. The company is now pushing the update to the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5, starting in the US.
US versions of Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Flip 5 get January update
As of this writing, Samsung‘s January 2024 update is available for carrier-locked variants of the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 in the US. The two foldables are picking up the new SMR (Security Maintenance Release) with the firmware build numbers F946USQS1BWL7 and F731USQS1BWL7, respectively. We can confirm the availability of the update for users on T-Mobile and Metro networks. A wider rollout should be just around the corner.
The latest updates for the factory-unlocked variants of Samsung’s 2023 foldables may or may not bear identical build numbers. However, the changelog will remain the same. The new release only brings this month’s security fixes, which isn’t surprising. Both Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 are coming fresh from the Android 14-based One UI 6.0 update, which they picked up in late November. It brought tons of new features and improvements.
As far as this month’s security fixes are concerned, there is a lot to talk about. The January 2024 SMR for Galaxy devices patches as many as 80 vulnerabilities—75 Android OS and five Galaxy-specific issues. Among the 75 Android OS flaws patched this month were one critical, six moderate, and 68 high-severity vulnerabilities. Four of the five Galaxy issues were moderate vulnerabilities in the Notification service, Samsung DeX, and My Files.
The fifth Galaxy-specific flaw was a high-severity improper authentication vulnerability in the Bluetooth pairing process. It allowed remote attackers to establish a pairing process without user interaction. The January security update patches all of these flaws in Galaxy devices. Note that the five Galaxy patches from Samsung don’t apply to Android products from other brands. The 75 Android OS patches do.
Fourth-gen Samsung foldables are receiving this update widely
When Samsung released the January update for the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, the availability was limited to Europe. The update is now available widely, including in Asia and the US. The new build numbers stateside are F936USQS3EWL9 and F721USQS3EWL9, respectively. The Korean firm will push the new SMR to more devices in the coming days. We will keep you posted accordingly.