The Project Fi team has just sent an email out to subscribers that a new Android Marshmallow update is being released for the Nexus 6. The notification comes on the same day that T-Mobile announced a Marshmallow update for the Nexus 6 on their network and as I speculated, a Project Fi specific build likely wasn’t far behind.
There had been a lot of rumors since the release of Marshmallow that users of Project Fi would have issues getting connectivity. Specifically that the switching mechanism with the new Fi SIM, Marshmallow and the Nexus 6 meant that users could not switch from T-Mobile or Sprint on-the-fly, a key selling point of Project Fi. Thus, to this point, an update had not been sent to subscribers. That has meant that Project Fi customers have remained on Android Lollipop.
I have been running Marshmallow as a Fi user but I receive the OTA update on my Nexus 6 while I was still on AT&T (my device is unlocked and was purchased from Google directly). When I switched over to Fi, I had no issues at all and in fact have found the service to be very reliable and faster than AT&T here in Denver. Ironically I reached out to Fi support earlier today asking about this very issue to which I was told that they had not had any issues reported to them. Yet we now have a new Marshmallow build. Curious much?
The Marshmallow update that is coming to Project Fi subscribers has all of the goodies that you know are in the update. You can read my full review of Android Marshmallow as well as what I think is the killer feature of the release, Doze. The battery life improvements on my Nexus 6 after updating to Marshmallow have been nothing short of amazing. You can get a complete rundown of all the features in Marshmallow at the official Google site for the release.
Project Fi Marshmallow Update Does Not Support LTE Band 12
Project Fi for Android
If there is one big disappointment in this update for Project Fi users, it is the fact that the update does not contain the LTE Band 12 support for T-Mobile. It would have been good to get this into
this build but it appears that Google and T-Mobile are still working through the issues with Band 12. What this means is that some Nexus 6 owners may have connectivity issues in buildings or in rural areas. The impacted users is likely small but be aware and you can of course delay taking the update if you wish.
Deciding to offer the update without Band 12 was a hard choice to make, but we know that many of you are anxious to get the improvements and features offered by Marshmallow, so we wanted to offer it as quickly as we could. We’re working hard to add Band 12 support and expect it to be available soon.
The key word there of course is “soon” and hopefully that means before the end of 2015.
The Marshmallow update is rolling out now so you have two choices. You can wait for your Nexus 6 to get the OTA on its own but it could be another week or more before you see it. If you want, you can go to Settings>About Phone>System Update and force your phone to check for the update. That doesn’t guarantee that you will get it but often times people find a manual trigger of the process will get the update downloaded.
