Samsung now rolling out fix for Galaxy S6 memory issues

By Joel Hruska

Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have secured a spot for themselves as two of the best Android phones ever released, but the launch hasn’t been entirely without problems. Since the devices appeared in-market, a number of complaints and videos have surfaced demonstrating that the device’s memory management was more than a little problematic. Samsung listened to the complaints and has responded in near-record time.

This information comes courtesy of GSMArena, which notes that the update (at least on European carriers) uses Android 5.0.2, and is billed as G920FXXU1AODG. Samsung isn’t offering much information on what it fixes, but GSMArena reports that the device seems snappier, with better overall performance characteristics. Footage of the original problem is shown below (skip to 40 seconds to see the benchmark begin)

It’s not clear if Samsung was simply bitten by the Android 5.0 memory leak bug that was discovered some months ago, or if the company’s custom software or other Android personalization efforts introduced an additional problem. Users reported that while the Galaxy S6 featured fast initial application loads, the phone aggressively shut applications down as soon as the user changed to a different window. The end result of this was that the Galaxy S6 won single application tests against competing devices, but would lose if the reviewer cycled through the same group of tests a second time. Other phones kept the apps cached in background, while Samsung’s device had to open them again from scratch. This isn’t a game-changing bug by any means, but if you multi-task frequently, sitting through the browser relaunch for the 50th time was undoubtedly annoying.

It’s possible that Samsung’s aggressive application shutdowns were actually the manufacturer’s way of avoiding the memory leak bug until it could issue its own patch for the problem. The update is only starting to hit devices, and may take several days to roll out completely. But if you have a Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge that’s been affected by this issue, drop by and let us know if the new software solves the situation.

The Galaxy S6 Edge isn’t the only device that’s just been updated with a (hopefully) performance improving patch. Google’s own Nexus 9, which is based on the 64-bit custom Nvidia CPU known as Project Denver, also got an Android patch this week. The Nexus 9 had languished for an unusually long time by Google standards while waiting for its update, so if you’ve got one of those devices, make sure you patch it up as soon as possible.