The Galaxy S4, in its day, was a pretty capable smartphone. However, with its fourth birthday fast approaching, its update period has long since passed. No matter to T-Mobile, though; the company has just pushed the latest February 2017 security patches to it and the older Galaxy Tab 3... but they're still on Android 4.4 KitKat.

This isn't the first time that T-Mobile's pulled something zany like this off; at the end of last year, it updated the two year-old ZTE ZMAX to November 2016 security patches, also on top of KitKat. But this is for a phone and tablet that are both a whopping four years old. I mean, just look at the menu capacitive button and the Holo design theme in the hero image above. And physical home buttons? So very 2016.

Also worth noting is that T-Mobile last updated the S4 and Tab 3 in December and August 2015, respectively. Clearly, updating old devices isn't something that T-Mo does regularly. I like to think that engineers throw these updates together when they're bored and want to have a laugh.

The Desire 626s got a similar treatment, but it's a newer device, was more recently updated, and only got the December 2016 security patch (still not bad for a budget device). We don't know where these oddball updates are coming from, but we sure hope T-Mobile keeps them up for the sake of entertainment (and security, let's not forget about that).

Update: The Tab 4 just got security patches of unspecified freshness as well.

VERSION

RELEASE DATE

ENHANCEMENTS

STATUS

Android version 4.4.4Baseband Version: M919UVSFQA1

February 8, 2017

Android Security updates

February 8, 2017If customers' devices meet the update requirements below, they can upgrade to the most current software version.

VERSION

RELEASE DATE

ENHANCEMENTS

STATUS

Android version 4.4.4Baseband version T217TUVSBQA1

February 8, 2017

Android Security updates

Available February 8, 2017If customers' devices meet the update requirements below, they can upgrade to the most current software version.

VERSION

RELEASE DATE

ENHANCEMENTS

STATUS

2.17.531.13Android version 6.0.1

February 7, 2017

This update includes the RSU fix and updates google security version to December 2016.

Available February 7, 2017If your device meets the update requirements below, you can upgrade to the most current software version.

Source: T-Mobile (1), (2), (3)