Ascend Mate 7 running Lollipop shown off on video

HUAWEI isn’t known for updating its handsets to the latest Android OS but the company is trying to change this and its flagship Ascend Mate 7 phablet looks set to be updated to the goodies that Android Lollipop. A new video has shown off exactly what the update to Lollipop will bring for Ascend Mate 7 owners and although it doesn’t confirm when the update will land, it’s nice to see that HUAWEI hasn’t forgotten about its customers.

The video shows that the Mate 7 will gain a new split-screen multitasking mode – similar to the feature offered by LG and Samsung – which allows you to run two applications side-by-side (or on top of each other depending on the orientation of your device). Other notable additions include the ability to quickly minimise the display and improvements to the one-handed interface mode, which makes it easy to use the large 6 inch display in one hand.

The Ascend Mate 7 was expected to be the first of HUAWEI’s existing devices to be updated to Android Lollipop last month but the update was seemingly delayed. One possible reason for the delay is that HUAWEI have skipped Android 5.0 and gone straight to Android 5.1 from Android 4.4 KitKat. However, the other reason could be the issues that have plagued the company’s HUAWEI P8 flagship, which is also running on Android Lollipop with Emotion 3.1 UI on top.

In its flagship – which hasn’t been released yet so the company has time to fix the issues – Huawei have used Google‘s latest OS but failed to adopt material design properly so there are several interface features that don’t quite work (such as the status bar being a different color to material design in applications). Other notable issues include Android Wear not working with the flagship and problems with the display of notifications but the company should have fixed these as part of the Android 5.1 update.

It’s unknown exactly when HUAWEI will begin rolling out the update to Mate 7 users but the video suggests its nearing rollout; like most devices, the update rollout is likely to be staggered across regions and carriers. We’ll keep an eye out for the update and let you know when it begins rolling out.

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