One of the advantages that BlackBerry has over its competitors in the Android space is that they have just one device. And that one device is basically running stock Android. Which allows them to push out updates much quicker. Seeing as there’s not a whole lot of changes that need to be made by their software team. This is evident with the monthly security updates that BlackBerry pushes out each month, and often times beat Google in pushing them out. Not to long ago, Google published the security bulletin for the July 2016 update, and have already begun rolling out the update to their Nexus, Android One and Pixel hardware. Now BlackBerry has begun doing the same for the BlackBerry Priv.
The update appears to be rolling out in Canada, but it should be available worldwide. Those that have gotten the update already, are reporting that the update is around 95MB in size, and includes all of the security fixes from Google’s security bulletin for July 2016. In addition to that, the changelog also says it’ll “improve your security, productivity, and creativity on your Priv.” For those that might be wondering, this update will bring you to the July 5, 2016 security patch level. As was announced earlier, there are two security patch levels this month. One that is dated for July 1st, and a newer one dated for July 5th. And BlackBerry is rolling out the newer one. Instead of letting it hang around until the August update.
If you do own the BlackBerry Priv, you should be able to grab the update now by going to Settings and tapping on About Phone, then System Updates and tapping on “Check for Updates”. If it doesn’t pull down the update right away, give it some time. It should pull down the update soon enough. Where this update is just a security patch, it’s not an update that will likely take long to roll out to everyone. The update does keep the BlackBerry Priv on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, which is currently the latest version of Android, until Android 7.0 Nougat drops in a few months.
