Android 9 Pie tipped to hit Samsung flagship phones in early 2019

There might be some light at the end of the tunnel for those of you patiently waiting for Android 9 Pie to arrive on your Samsung devices: a teaser for the OS update in the Samsung+ app points to early 2019 as the time when the software will roll out.

As noted by XDA Developers, the text inside the app says "Android 9.0 Pie is expected to roll out to Samsung Galaxy phones early next year" – so you won't be able to take advantage of the new features during 2018, but you won't have much longer to wait (assuming Samsung sticks to this schedule, of course).

Some of the features in Android 9 Pie get teased as well – adaptive battery control that squeezes out more battery life between charges by managing app behavior, app shortcuts, and the usual batch of extra emoji characters to play around with.

Beta testing imminent

According to leaked support documents, a public beta program for the Android 9 Pie OS should be available to Samsung Galaxy S9 and Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus owners in the next few days, giving users a chance to check out the new OS ahead of time.

Those of you who don't particularly fancy doing some free beta testing for Samsung and helping it work out the kinks in its updates will have a few more months to wait. Plenty of phones down below Samsung's flagships are still waiting to get their Android 8.0 Oreo update – a perennial problem for Android handsets.

Android 9 Pie will arrive as part of the Samsung Experience 10 update, at least for flagship Samsung phones – the software tweaks Samsung itself is going to add include a dark mode across the whole OS and an update to the always on display mode.