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Staying true to the commitment it made back in March, HTC has now announced a timeline for the Android 9 Pie rollout for three of its phones. The Taiwanese company took to its social media accounts to reveal that the U11 users can expect the update in late May, the U11+ owners will get Pie in late June, while those who use the company’s latest flagship, the U12+, will likely get it after mid-June.
An update was long overdue, especially for the U12+, which is the company’s current flagship. On the bright side, the rollout will begin before the second quarter of the year ends, as the company had promised before. However, HTC has said the dates may vary in certain areas and on different carriers.
When the public version of Android 9 was announced by Google in August 2018, HTC had promised its customers a taste of the Pie and given that the Android Q will be here in a few months time, the company is a bit too late. So far, only the Android One version of the U11 Life has gotten the Pie update. Despite the fact that the two have the same hardware, the HTC Sense variant of the U11 Life will not get the update. Similarly, other HTC phones will not be receiving the update either.
In its better days, HTC used to be one of the first Android manufacturers to ship the latest version of Android on its existing offerings as well as new phones. The last few years have been hard on the company, forcing it to downsize its business and exit numerous markets. The company has yet to release a new phone since the U12+, which was launched in summer 2018.
However, HTC isn’t ready to throw the towel just yet. Per a recent listing on Geekbench, the company apparently has a phone codenamed ‘HTC 2Q741’ in the works, which will be underpinned by the MediaTek Helio P35 chipset and flanked by 6GB of RAM. Rumor also has it that the company is working on two other phones, one of which would be a 5G flagship and the other would be Snapdragon-710 fueled mid-ranger. And of course, there is also the second-generation blockchain focused phone that the company has confirmed itself.
Exodus 1, HTC’s first blockchain phones, has reportedly performed as per the expectations of the company, and its successors will extend the manufacturer’s blockchain apps to include things such as messaging, browsing, and social media.
If reports are to go by, HTC’s 5G phone will be released in the second half of the year and if the news has any weight to it, we can expect the said phone to get the Android 10 Q update. 2018 wasn’t exactly a good year for the Taiwanese company but it appears that like a lot of other manufacturers, HTC is betting on 5G to turn its fortunes around. Then again, 5G support alone could not be the saving grace of any device, and HTC will have to add some differentiating features to make the phone a hit.