[Amazon Prime variant too] US Moto Z3 Play finally gets Android Pie (9.0) update

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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