HTC One A9 international unlocked variant receives OTA: no Android 6.0.1 or December security patch present

The HTCOne A9 has managed to be quite a successful device for Taiwan’s perennial OEM. After a botched recovery due largely to the One M9 and it’s failure to ignite solid sales, the newest flagship has seen sales soar.

For those customers in the USA opting for a carrier free, unlocked variant, firmware updates have been promised within 15 days of Nexus roll-out. The same was not, unfortunately, promised for phones sold under other conditions. Some worried that the international unlocked variants might be subject to deliberating delays. Just hours ago, a system update was pushed to one of our international devices:

The new firmware release, software update 1.27.709.15, weighs in at 295.58MB and lists the following:

• System stability improvements for the 3rd party game applications
• System enhancement

To our surprise, the update does not contain either Android 6.0.1 or December’s Android Security Patch. The former would bring with it new Emoji and a fix to Google’s time trouble bug, and the latter enhanced security measures.  Even more disappointing, the download process itself took close to an hour to download – on Wi-Fi no less – presumably due to a slow sever situation.

On a positive note, performance on the device is noticeably quicker after the update. Scrolling is smoother, loading and lag has been reduced. In general, everything feels much snappier and better optimized. It is likely that HTChas further refined Sense to make better use of the limited amount of RAM (2GB) for the international A9.

Please note that this update can currently be confirmed only for the A9u variant, which contains only 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It remains to be seen just when other territories and variants, such as those sold in the UK and India, receive the update.

It’s difficult to not be a bit disappointed with this new build version. While stability patches and device performance enhancements are always a welcome addition, initially it looked as if HTCwas going to push out the major updates in very close proximity to those in the USA. Alas that does not seem to be the case.

Have any of you with an international One A9 also received this new update? Have you noticed any specific improvements or changes? Please hit up the comments section below and sound off!