Android 7.0 preview leaks for the HUAWEI P9

Historically speaking, HUAWEI hasn’t been the best with updates, taking well over a year to bring the HUAWEI Mate 7 over to Lollipop. Thankfully, in recent times they’ve gotten a lot more responsive when it comes to updates. If a newly leaked ROM is any indication, HUAWEI’s future update timeliness is only going to get better. Thanks to a user over at XDA, a leaked beta build of Android Nougat has now arrived for the HUAWEI P9.

Ordinarily, it might seem a bit early for a new version of Android to leak with so much time left until the official release. But back in April, Google revealed that its Nexus family wouldn’t be the only devices to get a preview build of Android Nougat and announced that Sony’s Xperia Z3 would receive it as well.

Going by the posts over at XDA, as well as YouTube evidence, it looks like HUAWEI is working with a preview build of Nougat because the leaked files updates the handsets’ stock ROMs instead of flashing it in full. That lines up with what Google and Sony are doing, but it also means you’ll have to fall back to your stock ROM before springing forward with the official version when it releases this fall. And because this leak updates files instead of flashing the ROM, you’ll need to make sure you’re running stock before installing it. The XDA thread includes the P9’s stock files for those running cooked ROMs.

Further supporting the legitimacy, forum users have ran CPU-Z benchmarks and found that, contrary to what’s reported in the About Phone section, the update brings the ROM to version 7.0 and OS kernel version 4.1.18 — and its rocking a security patch from next Friday, Aug. 5. On top of that, there’s the presence of a new version of HUAWEI’s emotional user interface (EMUI). The changelog for EMUI 5.0 indicates that HUAWEI is rolling out a multi-user mode, camera optimization and battery management improvements. However, at least one user reported encountering worse battery management.

Are you considering a taste test of Android Nougat of your HUAWEI handset or have you had your fill of previews on a Z3 or Nexus device?