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Android 8.0 Oreo is set to start hitting Honor 7X units in the United States next week, Huawei’s subsidiary said Friday, having clarified the update will begin rolling out Monday, April 30. The over-the-air package is expected to take several weeks until it’s deployed on a national level, as is usually the case with firmware upgrades, especially major ones. The software itself is coming in the form of Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 implementation, though it’s currently unclear which exact security patch will be included with the update.
The Honor 7X is presently touted as one of the best mid-range options on the market, with the Chinese original equipment manufacturer managing to deliver an Android device that punches well above its $200 weight, as per countless stellar reviews from both critics and consumers alike. While the smartphone was commercialized in December when Android 8.0 Oreo was already available as a stable build for months, the Honor 7X debuted with Android 7.0 Nougat, presumably because Honor wanted to avoid implementing support for Google’s Project Treble that’s mandatory for all smartphone which ship with Oreo but not for those being upgraded to it from Nougat. Project Treble is effectively a reworked operating system framework that separates the core of the OS from vendor-specific implementations, making the process of developing and testing software updates easier, at least in theory.
The Chinese OEM hasn’t clarified whether its Oreo OTA package for the Honor 7X will include Project Treble support, though it likely won’t. The company is encouraging all users to start manually searching for the update starting this Monday from the system Settings app in case they want to make sure they’re downloading the new firmware from the moment it becomes available in their territory. While Honor has a small U.S. presence, it’s unlikely to expand its operations in a significant manner in the near term seeing how its parent has been clashing with Washington for the better part of the current century.