We are experiencing some curious cases with the August security patches lately. For example, a three year old phone series got them even before the most cutting edge flagship from the same OEM. Google itself lagged behind OEMs like Huawei to distribute the monthly patchset – now that’s a competition!

huawei_p20_pro_emui_9.1.0.325
Huawei P20 Pro running August security patch

Ensuring timely updates for the whole product portfolio is a hectic job for Android OEMs. Only a handful of them are working on this task with a perfect track record (of course I’m talking about Essential!). One of the newest additions in the roster is Realme.

Believe it or not, this young Chinese smartphone manufacturer provided July security patches during the end of July to the first week of August to most of their phones via a bunch of software updates. However, both Realme 2 and Realme C1 owners received a ‘revised’ Pie update with June patches.

realme_c1_a.56_ota_changelog
Changelog for Realme 2/C1’s last OTA

I emphasized on the word ‘revised’, as this is the second (as well as wider) rollout of ColorOS 6 flavored Android Pie OTA for the phone duo. The initial build (A.54) did not reach to majority of the users, thus the subsequent build (A.56) weighed about 2 GB for units running Oreo based ColorOS 5.2.

According to reports from Realme forums, the OEM pushed an incremental update for both Realme C1 and Realme 2. The OTA is carrying the build tag A.57 and sizes about 550 MB.

realme_c1_a.57_ota_prompt
A.57 OTA prompt on Realme C1

Thanks to the uncanny similarities between these two phones, their firmware builds have many common components – including the version number. I should not call it a coincidence, as the A.57 update bundles August security patches along with Realme App Market for both Realme 2 and Realme C1.

realme_2_a.57_changelog
Changelog (identical for Realme 2 and C1)

The dedicated App Market was made available to select Realme phones in past as a region specific feature. Some may consider it as yet another bloatware, but hardcore fans always prefer first party apps on their phones.

As per usual drill, the OTAs are being distributed in batches. They should be available on your Realme 2/C1 is due time. We are trying to capture the full update packages as well, so stay tuned!

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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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