Yesterday we reported the news for ASUS Google Nexus 7(2013) LTE owners that Google had released the factory image for Android 4.4.4 (KTU84P). This was long awaited by owners of the LTE variant of the Nexus 7 as the rest of the Nexus family including WiFi variants of the Nexus 7 had all received the update quite some time ago. The updated image was nothing special but did upgrade the Nexus 7 from Android 4.4.3 to Android 4.4.4.
One of the questions we received about this was if the Nexus 7 LTE was going to receive the OTA update anytime soon. Well at the time we didn’t have any news on this but it’s only been a day since Google released the factory image and now it seems the OTA has begun rolling out to its users. Again this is not a significant update and instead is rather minor In terms of both the content and actual size. The OTA update (as with the factory image) simply updates from Android 4.4.3 to 4.4.4. In terms of size the OTA is only 2.4MB which really does highlight how small the update actually is. As far as we are aware the main bulk of the update is just the usual bug fixes and very minor fixes.
So if you are a Nexus 7 LTE owner and have been waiting on this update then you can either flash the factory image or wait for the OTA to hit your device. If you want the flash route then as noted yesterday, you will need to have the fastboot tool installed on your computer. If you don’t have fastboot then click here to get it from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Also make sure your drivers are up-to-date and your bootloader is unlocked. Use fastboot to flash the factory image, wait for the automatic reboot and then lock the bootloader again. Of course, if that all sounds too much then just wait for the update which will hit soon enough. You’ve waited this long, surely another couple of hours or days won’t hurt too much.