For those of you who have the HTC U11, there is good news this morning. The company has begun rolling out their Android Oreo update to the phone but, for now, it is only in Taiwan. The update to the company’s home country is likely their version of “phasing” meaning that they are going to make sure that the update performs as expected before rolling out globally.
Assuming that everything goes smooth in Taiwan, you can expect the roll out of Oreo to the U11 to happen globally pretty quickly.
As for the update itself, it is big at 1.3GB which is not uncommon for major version changes in Android. The update also has the November Android Security Updates baked in, has support for Voice over WiFi. In Taiwan, VoWiFi is only support with Chunghwa Telecom so it isn’t clear if this will be available on the likes of T-Mobile when the upgrade comes to devices in the US.
Early reports on this update indicate that the U11’s Android Oreo update is pretty straightforward without a lot of modification or “bloatware” from HTC. This is good and falls in line with the company’s general approach to Android updates.
As for when HTC U11 devices in the US will see the update, that remains unclear. It is likely that it will be prior to the end of 2017 but that is an assumption based on the roll out in Taiwan going smoothly. Also, for carrier locked devices, that could introduce delays as carriers will want to review & approve the update themselves.
