[UPDATE: Response from HTC] HTC Breaks One A9’s 15-Day Update Promise on the Phone’s First Major Update

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Today, HTC announced their planned update schedule for Android 7.0 Nougat. The HTC 10 will be getting the update in Q4, and the HTC One M9 and HTC One A9 will be getting it afterwards. It’s always fantastic when an OEM is clear, concise, and communicative about their planned update schedule.

That communication is a big part of the reason that we were so excited last year when HTC promised to update the HTC One A9 within 15 days of Nexus devices getting any new android version for two years. The specs for the HTC A9 were a little bit disappointing for the price, but the updates and support were supposed to make up for it, not to mention that it was the first non-Nexus phone with Marshmallow. That 15-day deadline would place the release date for Android 7.0 on the HTC A9 as September 6th or earlier.

September is Q3.

If HTC’s update schedule is to be believed, then the very earliest that Nougat will be coming to the HTC One A9 will be in Q4 (after the HTC 10). It is always incredibly frustrating when a device is sold on the promise of one killer feature (in this case, Nexus-like updates), and then that feature gets pulled away. The device hasn’t even been out for a year yet, and they’re already pushing it to the back of the flagship update queue.

Then again, this is starting to become a bit of an expectation with HTC. They make promises about updates, and then fail to deliver. It happened with Lollipop, it happened with Kit Kat, and now it is happening with Nougat. HTC’s slow updates this year are particularly frustrating, as with Android Nougat and Marshmallow, Google has been making a huge push towards having OEMs get access to updates faster. This year, the Sony Xperia Z3 and the General Mobile 4G got the Nougat dev preview, and the LG V20 will be the first device to release with Nougat.

The worst part is that despite all of this, HTC is still one of the better OEMs for updates. If they didn’t overpromise and underdeliver, this article would instead have been about how HTC is doing a great job of communicating when updates will be coming, and about how other OEMs need to follow HTC’s example. This isn’t even a development issue (although we wouldn’t say no to some slightly quicker updates), this is a marketing issue.

Update from HTC: We reached out to HTC and received the following response: “With the excitement around Android Nougat, we’re aligning engineering resources around our most popular flagship products where the most customers will benefit.”

Do you generally trust OEMs’ long-term promises? Has an OEM ever lost your trust? Sound off below!