Android Jelly Bean now rolling out to UK SIM-free Galaxy S3 handsets

SIM-free Samsung Galaxy S3 owners in the UK should now be able to update their handset to the most recent build of the Android operating system, called Jelly Bean.

The company confirmed the 4.1 version of the open-source mobile OS started rolling out on Wednesday.

"Samsung UK can confirm that the open market Jelly Bean upgrade for Samsung Galaxy SIII is now live," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Last week, Samsung announced that it had started delivering Jelly Bean to operator-specific devices. Three was the first to update customers' devices, followed by O2 and Vodafone.

The Korean handset manufacturer has a history of delivering updates to network-specific devices before its SIM-free models. Previously, the SIM-free Galaxy S2 was due to get an update to Ice Cream Sandwich before contract models, but the update ultimately ended up rolling out to SIM-free phones last.

To check if the update is available, users need to go to the 'About Phone' section in 'Settings' and tap 'Check for Updates'. It seems that some users may need to attempt to check for updates multiple times due to load on Samsung's update servers.

When ZDNet tried on its SIM-free handset on Thursday a message appeared saying:

"Access to the software update service is provided to users in the order in which they request it. Try later."