Verizon pushes Oreo to Galaxy S7, is actually Nougat

If you own a Verizon-branded Samsung Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 Edge, you might have been excited to see a notification that Big Red is pushing an OTA Android 8.0 Oreo update your way. However, we have some bad news for you: it’s not Oreo, it’s actually Nougat, via Android Police.

Despite the fact that the release notes for the OTA say it’s an update to Oreo and includes descriptions of Oreo features like picture-in-picture mode, notification dots, and UI improvements, those features aren’t actually in the update. The only part of the update that’s new is the latest Android security patch.

The Verizon Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge devices shipped with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and were updated to Android 7.0 Nougat in March of last year. With that in mind, users were probably pretty excited about getting an OS update for the first time in over a year, so we can imagine how disappointed Verizon users are right now.

It’s not quite clear what happened here. Did Verizon mean to push out an Oreo update but then push the wrong file? The build number for the release is NRD90M, which is clearly a Nougat update. Or did Verizon mean to push out a simple Android security patch update but then accidentally posted it with a pre-prepped Oreo release note?

Regardless of what happened, you should absolutely install the update, as it’s important for your device to be up-to-date with the latest security patches. But don’t expect any feature updates after you’re finished.

We’ll let you know if and when Verizon either fixes this update with the actual Oreo OTA, or issues a statement on the matter.