HUAWEI Android 6.0 Marshmallow plans revealed: Mate S, Mate 7, P8, and more

The speed in which major OEMs update their devices to newer versions of Android has certainly increased in recent years, especially when it comes to HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and LG (LG G4’s Marshmallow update is a great example). Unfortunately, there are still many handset makers that neglect users when it comes to updates, especially smaller OEMs and many of the bigger Chinese OEMs. One such company that is notoriously bad at updates is Huawei.

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As an owner of the HUAWEI Mate 7 (in addition to a Nexus 5 and a few others), I can tell you that my handset is still rocking KitKat after all this time. While a Lollipop build does exist for some regional variants, as far as I’m aware, it is still in the beta stage and certainly hasn’t rolled out to the western world in stable form just yet. With HUAWEI, you pretty much are stuck with the software that ships, despite vague promises for an eventual update. So will things be any different with Marshmallow? While it’s too earlier to say how quick they’ll be at pushing out the firmware updates, HUAWEI is at least promising the update to a number of the Chinese variants of its products.

The list of models confirmed for the update include the HUAWEI Mate S, HUAWEI Mate 7, HUAWEI P8, P8 Youth Edition, P8 Max, Maimagn 4 , G7 Plus, and the G7. HONOR devices like the HONOR 7, HONOR 7i, 6 Plus, HONOR 6, HONOR X2, HONOR 4X, and Play 4C are also officially part of HUAWEI’s Marshmallow plans.

Now it is important to note that just because the Chinese variants are getting Marshmallow love, doesn’t mean we can expect things to be identical for international variants. We’d imagine that HUAWEI will at least bring Android 6.0 to more popular members of its family like the Mate S, Mate 7, HUAWEI P8, and some of the newer HONOR phones – but really that’s just speculation at this point. Judging by the ultra-slow rollout schedule that the Mate 7 has seen for Lollipop, even if your device does get an update, we’d be prepared for a long, long wait.

Then again, ever since Google introduced the concept of developer previews to Android with Lollipop, we’ve seen more OEMs up their upgrading game, and so perhaps HUAWEI is finally coming onboard? Only time will tell for sure.