LG was recently ranked eighth in the world of top 10 smartphone OEMs that actually care about rolling out software updates to their devices. This is according to a Counterpoint Research, which also ranked Nokia, Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo as the top 5 in the same aspect.
Gone are the days when LG was among the best vendors as far as software updates are concerned. At some point, the South Korean company even beat Google to become the first OEM to unveil a phone powered by Android Nougat weeks before the search giant.
At the time, friends of LG were over the moon especially after the disastrous attempt at modularity with the LG G5 in the hope that the company had opened a new chapter going forward, but little did they know this move wasn’t going to suddenly spice things up in their favor.
The phone in question here is the LG V20, which came out in September 2016 – the same year that Google ditched the Nexus program in favor of the Pixels. Usually, a new Android OS first powers a Google device, but the V20 beat the OG Pixels to the crown.
To stand out, though, Google went with the updated Android 7.1 Nougat for the OG Pixels and as I write this, these two phones are now receiving the update to Android 10 stable, get this, their third major OS upgrade.
It took LG nearly a year to prepare the update to Android Oreo for the V20. Matter of fact, the V20 Oreo update arrived on some variants way after Android Pie had been released for multiple devices, including non-Pixels.
This, by all means, was an early sign that Pie would take ages to arrive. And indeed, it was only until recently that we started seeing signs of LG V20 Android Pie update. Screenshots of the device running Android 9 popped up online, suggesting the OS was being tested ahead of rollout.
Today, we have even more solid evidence that the LG V20 is about to begin receiving the update to Android 9 Pie, just in time for Android 10. No, the V20 isn’t eligible for an update to Android 10, so don’t even think about it. For now, let’s stick to Pie.
Google has updated the Android Enterprise Solutions Directory for the LG V20 with new software – Android 9. Prior to this, the V20 had Oreo and with the update to Android 9, it means the device should, in fact, be running Pie right now.
FYI, the LG V20 Pie update hasn’t been released yet, but the Android Enterprise listing is enough to confirm that it should begin rolling out soon. How soon it remains to be seen, but our guess is before the end of this month.
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