HTC is one of the few Android OEMs to have agreed to follow Google’s lead in patching up security vulnerabilities in Android on a monthly basis. Apart from the Taiwanese vendor, other tier-1 manufacturers like Samsung, Sony and LG have also publicly declared their intentions of keeping up with Google’s schedule, and have been rolling out the latest security patches for the month of December in keeping with their assurances. The promise of timely security patches however, extends only to the premium handsets, leaving millions of users potentially vulnerable to security exploits. Either way, now that most of the aforementioned OEMs have been rolling out the December security patches to their respective premium smartphones, it is now the turn of HTC to follow suit.
Having already patched up the recently-released One A9 earlier this month, the Taiwanese manufacturer has now apparently started rolling out this month’s cumulative security patches for the One E9 and the One E9+. The source of the report is Taiwan, so it looks as though charity begins at home for HTC, which is just as well, but now that the rollout process has started, it is only a matter of time before the software is made available to global versions of the two devices as well. The latest OTA update comes with version number 1.50.709.3 for the One E9 and 1.45.709.5 for the E9+. The new software is said to come in the form of a 358 MB file (for the One E9), and while the official changelog isn’t immediately available, it’s highly unlikely to add any new feature to either of the handsets.
As mentioned already, the latest updates rolling out to the two devices are only likely to bring the security patches for the month of December. While reports about the update are only coming out of Taiwan at the moment, it shouldn’t be long before users elsewhere start receiving them on their devices as well, although, there’s no official ETA for that. Owners of the two smartphones will also be hoping that HTC rolls out Android 6.0 Marshmallow to their devices sooner rather than later. It remains to be seen when that happens, but as of now, One E9 and E9+ owners can expect a fairly large security update in the coming days and weeks.
