NVIDIA Shield Tablet K1 to get Android Nougat "in a few weeks"

NVIDIA has confirmed that the Shield Tablet and Shield Tablet K1 will receive the Android Nougat update. The news arrived via a customer care agent in the NVIDIA Forums, while the NVIDIA Shield hub Google+ account suggests that Nougat will roll out to the Shield Tablet K1 “in a few weeks.”

Android 7.0 Nougat recently rolled out to the NVIDIA Shield TV and introduced a wealth of new features to the platform, raising questions about when NVIDIA’s other hardware would be upgraded to the new Android platform.

The original NVIDIA Shield was released in July 2014 with Android 4.4.2 KitKat. If it receives the upgrade to Nougat, it would become the first (and perhaps last) former KitKat device to do so. The Shield was succeeded by the less expensive Shield K1 in November 2015; it’s rumored that an intended 2016 follow-up was cancelled by NVIDIA for “business reasons.”

We’ll keep an eye out for a more detailed announcement regarding the update on the Shield blog in the coming weeks.