Two major Android OEMs have publicly commented regarding the slower than expected rollout of Android Lollipop updates for their respective smartphone lines, with very similar reasons for the delays rooted in extended carrier testing cycles and longer than expected development cycles.
First, Motorola issued an update on the state of its Android Lollipop update rollout by detailing its initial success with rolling out Android Lollipop to owners of the 2014 Moto X Pure Edition within 8 days of its official launch via Google Nexus devices and recent rollouts of Lollipop for Indian and Brazilian owners of the 2013 Moto G. However, the company has also gone into detail on why the updates are taking longer than usual to rollout, with the manufacturer blaming various factors, such as regional differences and varying levels of carrier testing and approval cycles affecting the time from initial development to final delivery for other regions.
HTC has also issued its own statements on why its own Lollipop rollout is taking longer than its self-imposed 90-day deadline to rollout major Android versions to its smartphones and it blames Google’s struggles with the initial Lollipop builds along with the aforementioned carrier testing cycles for missing its self-imposed 90-day deadline, while promising improved performance.
We’ve been working hard in the labs with Google and our carrier partners ever since the code release and are making great progress so far, but if you’ve been following the progress of this rollout you will know that Google has had to address several issues with this release.
We’ve been diligently working to fix some of them on our end and incorporating Google’s fixes as quickly as possible, but despite everyone’s best efforts some carrier versions of the HTC One (M8) and HTC One (M7) will not meet our 90 day goal, which is February 1st. While we are committed to delivering within this time period, we are even more committed to ensuring these updates result in an even better experience with your device because that is what the updates are intended to do.
We are continuing to push hard to deliver Lollipop to all devices as near the 90-day mark as possible, but we are taking every precaution to ensure the rollout is right and we aren’t willing to compromise at your expense. As of today, we’ve rolled out to Google Play, Unlocked, and Developer Editions of the HTC One (M8).
The above underscores the continuing difficulty that Google and OEMs experience with rolling out major Android updates despite substantial effort being made on both sides to speed updates, as Jelly Bean is still the most common version of Android, followed by KitKat and Lollipop being the most recent, barely registers in terms of current usage. While the update lag is also being blamed on fragmentation, in this case the problems center on OEMs and carriers misjudging the amount of testing needed for the update and underestimating the changes Google made to the operating system compared to previous Android versions.
