New updates are being added at the bottom of the story…

The Play series of phones under Moto Z branding are considered as the budget friendly offering from the Lenovo owned OEM. While Motorola prefers to use flagship grade Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx SoCs in regular Z or Z Force phones, the Play lineup comes with mid-range 6 series chips.

moto_z3_play_front_back
Moto Z3 Play is latest Z Play series phone

Since their inception in 2016, the Z Play phones got their own fan base. By the virtue of the ‘Z’ branding, these phones are compatible with Moto Mods. The energy efficient SoCs, coupled with moderate sized batteries (3,000 mAh in Z3 Play), can easily fulfil the requirement of the users.

Motorola usually provides two major Android version upgrades for the Moto Z Play lineup. Following the trend, 2018’s Moto Z3 Play should effectively get Android 9.0 Pie update on top of the factory installed Oreo (8.1), but the situation was slightly complicated.

moto_z3_play_pie_update_us_mfn
Motorola Feedback Network for Moto Z3 Play Pie update in the US

While Moto Z3 Play owners from regions like Brazil or Canada were reportedly getting the Pie update, US users were stuck with Oreo for months. Motorola did publish the update notes for the US models for a couple of times, but it was never released to the masses.

moto_z3_play_pie_may_patch_update_note
Latest update note for Moto Z3 Play, mentioning May 2019 security patch (Click/Tap to zoom)

Well, looks like the endless waiting is now finished – several US users are now getting the Pie update prompt on their Moto Z3 Play. Both regular unlocked and Verizon models are part of this release wave.

The build number of the new OTA update is PPW29.183-29-1. Android Pie exclusive features like navigation gestures, adaptive battery or rotation keys are now accessible to the Z3 Play owners in the USA, although the security patch level is still April 2019.

moto_z3_play_us_pie_update_changelog
Source

It is still not very clear why they delayed the update so much in one particular region, while other got it months ago. Anyway, better late than never!

Motorola delivered 4.4 kernel with this update. The phone does support Project Treble, thus users should hope for faster updates. Problem is, OEMs like Lenovo (the parent company of Motorola) is often lagging to release updated software components for their phones.

moto_z3_play_us_pie_about_device

As per the design of Moto’s software, a rooted user need to grab the update package and share with the community for manual flashing. No such package has been located yet, but we will update this article whenever we get our hands on the update zip.

US readers, have you received the update prompt on your Moto Z3 Play? Comment below.

Update 1 (June 14)

We are now seeing reports that Amazon Prime model of the Motorola Moto Z3 Play has also started getting the Pie update.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.

Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

Next article View Article

[April 10: Official acknowledgement for recommended videos bug] YouTube Library tab broken and sidebar missing, users say

This story is being continuously updated…. New updates are being added at the bottom….. Original story (from 2019) follows: Incoming are reports related to two separate YouTube-related issues. The...
Apr 10, 2020 0 Min Read