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HTC can't promise 90-day Android updates any more
With the news that the HTC One M8 update to Android 5.1 Lollipop would be happening in August, we contacted Jeff Gordon from HTC to see if there was an estimated arrival time on the Android 5.1 update for the One M9. Gordon’s response wasn’t too encouraging: ”We never committed to releasing Android 5.1 updates within 90 days.”
We know the One M8 will get Android 5.1 in August but what about the One M9?
As you probably know, when HTC Advantage was announced, HTC pledged to update its flagship devices to the latest version of Android within 90 days of receiving final software from Google, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Regardless of whether HTC met the targets, consumers appreciated the attempt because it was transparent and honest. The 90-day commitment may not have been guaranteed (or even a permanent part of the overall Advantage program), but it was a good thing.
The end of HTC Advantage also marks the end of public commitments.
While HTC Advantage has now been replaced by HTC Uh Oh Protection, it is unfortunate that a public ambition – even if it was only limited to Android 5.0 on the One M7 and M8 – to hit a 90-day update cycle has been withdrawn in favor of a loose commitment to ”timely” updates. Which doesn’t tell us much because there is no definition of what ”timely” means in the Uh Oh Protection fine print.
So does this mean HTC has abandoned hope of releasing Android 5.1 for its devices within three months? As far as Android 5.0 was concerned, HTC made this promise for the One M8 and One M7 on November 4, 2014. Google released the final Android 5.0 software to the public on November 12, 2014. While the 90-day window passed for some devices, it was close enough for most.
You may not get public update cycles, but Uh Oh protection adds other valuable stuff.
If the 90-day commitment were still in place, we could assume that Android 5.1 would arrive in the first week of June (5.1 was released by Google on March 9, 2015). Even though our question added another couple of months to this window, HTC doesn’t seem willing to make any commitment on Android 5.1 at all, even for the HTC One M9.
Gordon did, however, mention an internal target, and HTC UK has already confirmed Android 5.1 in August for the One M8, so we are left to assume that we ”might” see a ”timely” update ”sometime” in June or July to Android 5.1 for the HTC One M9.
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