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HTC is one of the tier-1 Android OEMs alongside multinational consumer electronics giants like Samsung, Sony and LG, to have publicly announced its willingness to follow Google’s monthly security update schedule for Android. Now, through a post on microblogging site Twitter, Mr. Mo Versi, the Vice President of product management at HTC, has revealed that the company has started rolling out the January security updates for the unlocked model of the One A9 from Friday evening. The post states, “HTC One (A9) unlocked owners! The Jan security updates and bug fixes is being updated via OTA this morning. Thanks”. Which is simple, but conveys the message effectively. As for the incoming update, it is about 100 MB in size and comes with build number 1.56.617.1. The company had pushed out the December security updates for the device early last month.
As for the update itself, it is expected to be rolled out in phases, as is the norm, so One A9 owners in most regions should start seeing their OTA notifications sooner rather than later, if they haven’t already. Updates can also be checked for manually, by going into Setting > About Device > Updates on your phones. It’s worth remembering that the update is only for the unlocked version of the phone. There’s no word currently about when the update will be rolled out to carrier-locked versions of the device, but it may take quite a while before that happens, as is the case more often than not. With Samsung, LG and Sony having already committed to following Google’s monthly security update schedule, it is heartening to see HTC starting to do the same as well, at least for some of their more premium models.
As for the device that’s receiving the update, the One A9 happens to be the latest premium smartphone from HTC and features a 5.0-inch 1080p AMOLED capacitive touchscreen. The device comes with a Snapdragon 617 under the hood and has 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage out of the box. Imaging options include a 13-megapixel rear-facing primary camera and a 4-megapixel front-facing selfie-cam. The phone also includes a fingerprint scanner and an integrated NFC chip. The device comes with Android 6.0 Lollipop out of the box with HTC’s proprietary Sense UI laid on top, and carries a 2,150 mAh Li-Ion battery.