Lenovo's move to shift to stock Android for its smartphones was one of the biggest pieces of news this year. Gadgets 360 was the first to confirm the shift, and the move certainly appears beneficial for Lenovo smartphone users. However, the promise of faster updates that came alongside seems to have held little water.
The company has updated its "Upgrade plan for smartphones" list on Support page adding the Lenovo K8 series, all of which were promised Android 8.0 Oreo updates at launch. We know the Lenovo K8, Lenovo K8 Note, and Lenovo K8 Plus smartphones will be receiving an Android O update - now, we also know that the Chinese company intends to roll out the update to the Lenovo K8 and Lenovo K8 Note only by June 2018, with the Lenovo K8 Plus only due to receive it by July 2018.
The Lenovo K8, K8 Note, and K8 Plus users will have to wait for another nine months for the update. This does certainly seem to be on the higher side. After all, the smartphones run stock Android, which apart from performance and stability benefits was also supposed to enable faster update rollouts. The company, working with its hardware partners, will only have to make minimal tweaks to create Oreo builds for the aforementioned handsets. Of course, this may be of under-promising and over-delivering, with the company possibly rolling out the updates significantly sooner than those deadlines.
The announcement, which could be considered a reconfirmation of Lenovo's promise, adds more smartphones to the list of Android devices confirmed to get the new Oreo release. For those unaware, Android 8.0 Oreo brings in a lot of new features like picture in picture mode, notification channel feature, notification badges, Android instant apps, faster boot times, notification dots, redesigned Settings, revamped Google Now, and much more.
Back in August, Lenovo confirmed to Gadgets 360 that going forward it will abandon its Vibe Pure UI Android customisation which ran on top of its Android smartphones in almost all markets.
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