HTC’s decision to leave its 2012 flagships, the HTC One X and One X+, on Android 4.2 was met with a vocal outcry from owners of said phones. In a Q&A session on Reddit, a team of HTC managers revealed the decision wasn’t up to the company.
They pointed the finger at NVIDIA, saying the chipset maker didn’t provide the necessary support to port Android 4.4 KitKat to Tegra 3.
In the US, the One X is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset (for the LTE support) but it’s not getting KitKat either. “We didn’t think it would be a good experience for our customer base to update the X, but not the X+.” Note: One X+ is powered exclusively by Tegra.
The company has now had a change of heart and is “actively exploring” an update to Android 4.4 for the US HTC One X. It’s not clear if the HTC One XL - the international variant of the Snapdragon phone - will be updated or not.
In case you’re wondering how the Nexus 7 (2012) got KitKat with its Tegra 3 chipset, it’s because inside it is the T30L. The HTC One X and One X+ use the AP33 and AP37 respectively. It’s unclear why, but NVIDIA is supporting the T30L better than the AP3x, leading to this debacle.
You can read the whole Ask Me Almost Anything (AMAA) thread over at Reddit. There's more discussions than just the One X thing - the HTC team also revealed the company is working with Microsoft to update the HTC 8X to Windows Phone 8.1 ("Blue"), which is not fully official yet.
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The unannounced mid-range HTC Desire smartphone that we first saw a few days ago may not be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (as initially rumored), but by an octa-core chip manufactured by MediaTek. What’s more, it appears that the handset has several cheerful color versions, including blue, yellow, red and orange. Paired with the phone’s thin, plastic construction, these colors make us think about Apple’s iPhone 5C.
According to ePrice, apart from possibly featuring an 8-core MediaTek CPU, the new Desire could come with a 5-inch 720p display, 1.5GB of RAM, 8MP rear camera with LED flash (no UltraPixel nonsense here), Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, and Sense 5.5 UI. The smartphone may be sold for no more than $330 in China. Unfortunately, nothing is confirmed at this point. However, if this Desire is real and HTC intends to launch it internationally, we might see it at MWC 2014 in Barcelona at the end of next month.
It’s not the first time we are hearing about a possible HTC-MediaTek collaboration. The Taiwanese company could certainly benefit from choosing MediaTek’s affordable chipsets - which are used by many companies that commercialize smartphones in China (and South East Asia in general).
The long-awaited Android 4.4 KitKat update reached its way to the Google Play and developer editions of the HTC One in November, but users on the four major carriers in the US have been stuck on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Luckily, HTC announced on Thursday the majority of HTC One users in the US are one step closer to seeing Android 4.4 KitKat on their handset.
HTC has rolled out its KitKat update to Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile for final carrier testing, and certification is expected to come next week. This means the update has reached the third out of fourth stage before being pushed out over-the-air to users' handsets.
The update is now in carriers hands to install their own custom software and run tests, and then software is ready. Users are simply at the mercy of carriers, not HTC, to release the update.
We presume the update will be released in the US in the coming weeks, if no issues are found. HTC had previously promised January, but the days left are quickly numbering.
There's no word on KitKat for the HTC One in the UK.
Source: HTC