You might have already heard/read that the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for Samsung Galaxy S III has been available in European regions and in South Korea. Yesterday the update was available in Sweden and last week in South Korea. The update first started from Poland last month. And for UK users, the update has been scheduled for the end of this month. We were expecting that the update will be available for US variants soon, but it seems not so soon.
Droid Life has now reported that the update will only be available in 2013 for US variant of Galaxy S III. This will be a major set back for us users and Android ICS users will not be happy. You may have to consider switching to custom ROM if you want to switch to JB.
We are speculating that the delay in JB update may be due to US carriers requiring to test additionally regarding compatibility, stability etc. Unlike in International versions where the Galaxy S III’s are not under contract, OS updates seems to have been easy as per our past experience.
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean has been quite a buzz among Android users. Android Jelly Bean features like Google Now, Project Butter performance enhancements and the redesigned notification shade, in addition to new TouchWiz features are expected to bring a huge change in the Galaxy S III experience. Considering that Galaxy S III, a premium device and with its iPhone Killer tad and all, we had hoped that the update would be available sooner than other devices. This delay will definitely hit the sales of the device in the US for now.