Remember that unfortunate Asus phone, which is carrying the burden of the convoluted nomenclature of its parent company as well as yet to get the stable version of Android Pie? Yes, we are talking about the ZenFone 4 from the Taiwanese OEM (to be precise, the 2017 edition).
Similar to the the saga of ZenFone 5, Asus actually launched another phone named ZenFone 4 back in 2014. The older revision was powered by the Intel Atom Z2520 platform and ran a heavily skinned version of Zen UI on top of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean (later upgraded to KitKat).
On the other hand, the true fourth generation ZenFone debuted in 2017, alongside a bunch of variants. ZenFone 4 Pro, the flagship among them, recently got a minor security patch update. But what about the long-anticipated Android Pie OTA?
PiunikaWeb readers should recall the shenanigans regarding the Pie update for the ZenFone 4 lineup. Initially they published a stockish (no Zen UI) beta update, pulled it back, and re-released the same build.
However, there is still no proper ETA about the arrival of the stable update. Users having other variants, such as ZenFone 4 Selfie/Selfie Pro and ZenFone 4 Max/Max Pro are absolutely clueless about the fate of their phones.
Amidst this uncertain situation, Asus has announced new updates for both the regular ZenFone 4 as well as the ZenFone 4 Selfie 4. The new builds boost the security patch level of both phone to July 5, 2019 – all the way from May.
In case of ZenFone 4 Selfie Pro, the internal software version is changed from 71.50.395.82 to 71.50.395.89. On the other hand, ZenFone 4 gets 15.0610.1907.32 from 15.0610.1905.28.
As per the typical formula of OTA, these updates will start to hit a small number of random users in the first batch. Wider rollout should be expected within a week or so, and then Asus will upload the full firmware on device specific support pages.
Nevertheless, these new builds are still based on Android Oreo. The SD630/660 in ZenFone 4 and SD625 in ZenFone 4 Selfie 4 are perfectly capable of running Android Pie, yet Asus is taking months to deliver the Pie update. Let’s hope for the best. ?
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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.
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