When Android 4.4 KitKat was released in the home stretch of last year, many OEMs came forward to announce their update plans for their current flagship devices. HTC was one of these manufacturers, and they were bold enough to announce that all US carrier variants of their flagship HTC One would receive the KitKat goods in 90 days or less.
For the most part, HTC has been quite good about getting updates out to various versions of the One. For starters, the Google Play edition was broken off a piece of that KitKat bar just about two weeks after the OS was announced. Then not too long after, we saw Android 4.4 make an appearance on the Developer and Unlocked variants of the One.
Now, we are approaching the self-imposed 90 day deadline that HTC originally strove to achieve, but it seems as if we won’t be seeing KitKat hit US carrier devices in the next few days. Now before you get ready to pick up those pitchforks and take your digital stampede over to Twitter and other forms of social media, it’s important to realize that not all of this is directly under HTC’s control. In fact, in an effort to boost transparency regarding firmware updates, HTC went so far as to explain why carrier-branded devices lag behind their GPe counterparts.
Now, HTC America’s President John Mackenzie has issued a statement apologizing for the fact that the company will unfortunately fail to meet their rather aggressive deadline. However, there is good news in all of this. First off, it’s commendable that the company is admitting and taking ownership for this issue, as it shows that the ailing company genuinely cares for its consumers. Second, if you take a look at HTC’s software update page, the status for these branded devices states that they are currently undergoing carrier certification. Thus if we take HTC at face value, they have already sent updates to all major US carriers and the delay is now due to the carriers rather than HTC. And finally, Mackenzie states that the update will go live in a couple of weeks.
We should applaud HTC for coming forth and taking ownership of this small setback. After all, it’s better that they’re actively are working on pushing out these updates and keeping their promises, as well as holding themselves accountable for when they fail to meet their self-imposed deadlines. What are your thoughts on the delay and HTC’s apology letter? Let us know in the comments below!