HTC doesn’t seem to release Android Pie for less than two-year-old U Ultra

HTC has announced the devices that will receive an upgrade to Android 9.0 Pie. This does not include this year’s Desire 12 and last year’s high-end phone U Ultra. The list of devices that will receive an upgrade includes four phones.

HTC will equip the U12+, U11+, U11 and U11 Life with Android Pie, says the manufacturer on Twitter. This only concerns the Android One version of the U11 Life that came out in Europe. The Life is the only midrange phone in the short line. The U Play from early last year is missing. This year’s Desire 12 and 12+ are also not in the list. The HTC 10 does not appear, presumably because it is more than two years old.

In theory, it is still possible that HTC will expand the list of devices that are eligible for an upgrade, although that is not obvious. The manufacturer also does not announce when the upgrades will be released. HTC says it will confirm that later. Usually the newest phones get the upgrades first; for example, last year the U11 was the first of the HTC phones to receive Oreo, while the HTC 10 followed.

Android 9.0 came out last week. That only happened for Google’s Pixel phones. Three of the four Pixel phones so far are from HTC; the Pixel, Pixel XL and Pixel 2 are all designs from the Taiwanese smartphone maker.