HMD Global, the licensee for the Nokia brand on smartphones, has been one of the companies to show the biggest commitment to keeping its devices up-to-date with the latest versions of Android. The Nokia 7 Plus was one of the few devices to participate in the Android Beta Program this year, and it recently started receiving the stable version of Android Pie.
Today, at the event where it announced the Nokia 7.1, HMD also provided some information regarding when users should expect to taste the latest version of Android on other smartphones. As you would expect, the company is prioritizing its more popular phones for the rollout, starting with the Nokia 6.1 and 6.1 Plus, both of which should receive the update sometime this month. Then, the Nokia 8 and Nokia 8 Sirocco should both get their slice of Pie.
Unfortunately, details weren"t provided for any of the manufacturer"s other smartphones, which may be disappointing to some. This isn"t entirely unexpected, however. Nokia"s lineup of smartphones has grown quite a bit since the brand was reborn last year and keeping the promise of always being up-to-date gets increasingly harder as you have more devices to support. In his review of the Nokia 2.1, our own Muhammad Jarir Kanji noted that the phone was still on the August security patch, which isn"t quite the latest version out there.
With that being said, this release schedule still puts Nokia ahead of many competitors. Some companies can take almost a year to update their flagship smartphones to the latest version of Google"s OS, let alone mid-range devices. Hopefully, Nokia will continue to deliver on its promise of an up-to-date Android experience.