HTC U11 Life is HTC’s first smartphone to get the Android Pie update

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Google released the first stable version of Android Pie back in the first week of August. We’re getting close to the fourth month after its release and some companies are just now beginning to get the latest version of Android onto their devices. In fact, there are some who have begun selling devices in the last month or two that are shipping with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. HTC’s mobile division isn’t in the best position right now, but even they were able to beat some of these OEMs as the HTC U11 Life is now starting to receive its update to Android 9 Pie.

HTC U11 Life Forum

It’s quite interesting that the U11 Life is the first HTC smartphone to receive an update to Android Pie. We covered its launch last year right at the start of November and while it was sad to see it launch with Android Nougat, the device was quickly updated to Android Oreo. The HTC U11 Life is an Android One device so it actually makes sense that it’s the first in the U11 series to receive an update to Android Pie. However, we are surprised that it beat out the HTC U12+ (the company’s current flagship) as flagships tend to receive the most attention when it comes to major OTA updates.

We learned about HTC’s plans to update the HTC U11, HTC U11+, HTC U11 Life and the HTC U12+ to Android 9 Pie just a few months ago. They made this announcement in the form of a causal tweet and naturally didn’t give any details as to when we should expect any of these devices to receive the update. So many thought the U12+ would be the first to be updated. The thing is, it’s possible that they began working on Android Pie for the U12+ first but also started working on the other announced devices as well.

Since the HTC U11 Life is an Android One device it was quicker to complete and that has led us to today. We’re still keeping our ear to the ground for rumblings of additional Android Pie updates from HTC since this device receiving its update means that it opens up additional resources to the U11, U11+, and U12+.