On Wednesday, Jason Mackenzie who is the president of HTC, announced via Twitter that the Sprint HTC One is getting Android 4.3 beginning today. Just last week he told us that the HTC One would miss the “end of September” deadline they set for the updates, at least the carrier versions would miss it. Here it is October 2nd and the update is rolling out, so I guess that’s not too terrible. Especially considering how late they’ve been with updates in the past. Does anyone remember the Thunderbolt Ice Cream Sandwich update?
The update brings mostly under the hood changes, but since most of you, if not all of you are upgrading from Android 4.1, it also brings lock screen widgets and more butter to your device. It’s a pretty hefty update. About 571MB in size. In fact one of our writers already got the update on his HTC One from Sprint, so we’ve got some screens to share with you. We’ve been told that the update will also feature new Sense features like Instagram support in Instagram (technically a 4.2 feature addition) along with some new video highlight templates.
It’s great to see HTC getting this update out before Samsung has. Especially with all the heat HTC has been getting lately about the fact that they don’t update their devices. When they actually do, it’s just not as quickly as other manufacturers do it. So here’s to hoping that this is the start of something new. Especially with Android 4.4 due to be announced in a few weeks.
As far as where the other carrier branded HTC One updates are? They are more than likely still in testing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see T-Mobile’s roll out next, and then AT&T’s. I fully expect Verizon’s to be last, not just because they are Verizon. But because their HTC One launched with Android 4.2, while the others are still on Android 4.1. HTC said that they want the Android 4.1 One’s on Android 4.3 before they worry about the Android 4.2 models. But we should see them all “very soon”.
If you’re rocking a Sprint HTC One, let us know how you’re liking the update, if you’ve received it.