[Update: Stable rolling out] Moto G6 Plus gets an Android Pie soak test in Brazil

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Update 1/22/19: The stable Android Pie update for the Moto G6 Plus is now rolling out. Users from various countries and carriers are reporting the update has arrived.

Over the last three major releases of Android, Google has stuck to a release window sometime within the month of August. It’s rare to see an Android OEM release a stable update right when Google does. However, the company is working with the major OEMs to get these updates out as quickly as possible. Motorola is a company that has leveraged this help to get Android Pie out to the Motorola One, the Moto X4 (in both Brazil and the United States), and the Motorola One Power in India. They’ve also been able to begin a soak test for Android Pie in Brazil for the Moto G6 Plus as well.

There’s a lot that goes into upgrading a previously released smartphone with a new major version of Android. Lately, we have seen devices in the Android One program receive these updates faster than others thanks to the minimal changes that those OEMs do to the software. This puts less work on the OEM, which means those updates get pushed out to the customer a lot faster. However, there are some OEMs out there that make a number of changes to the AOSP software for their device.

Moto G6 Plus XDA Forum

This scale ranges from lots of changes from companies like Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, to others that make minimal changes including Motorola, HMD Global, Sony, and a few others. We just learned that the Nokia 8 is getting its official OTA update to Android Pie and now we have learned that the Moto G6 Plus from Motorola is getting one step closer to its official Android 9 Pie update. While a stable version has yet to begin rolling out for this device, we knew it was going to happen eventually so we’re not surprised that a soak test for the update in Brazil has started. This is according to a few users from Brazil posting on the Moto G6 Plus Google+ group.

These soak tests can vary in length so it’s almost impossible to pinpoint when the official version goes out. If Motorola is unable to find any critical bugs then we could see the official update start to roll out in phases within a few weeks. This isn’t always the case though and there are some cases where bugs get spotted during the beta testing period. If that happens then we could see the update delayed for a few months. Thankfully, this type of delay is rare due to Motorola’s relatively light changes so we could see the official Android 9 Pie update rolling out in the very near future.

Update: Stable rolling out

Users in the r/MotoG subreddit are receiving the stable update now. It arrives as version PPW29.116-11 and includes the December 2018 security patches.