Motorola have recently highlighted what recent devices are receiving the update to Android 7.0 Nougat, and of course what devices are not going to be updated. Amongst the lucky handsets receiving the update is the Motorola Moto G4 family, scheduled for the download during the fourth quarter. Today, we have good news in that Motorola Brazil has released the update to Android 7.0 Nougat for those Moto G4 Plus customers participating in the soak test. The soak test is available for Brazilian customers who are subscribed to the Motorola Feedback Network and who promise not to disclose details of the soak test secret. We have received word that the update has started rolling for those eligible customers and is a 953MB download, as you can see at the bottom of this article.
Because customers signed up for the soak test are keeping details confidential, we do not yet know the exact features and benefits of the update to Android 7.0 Nougat beyond the stock improvements from Android 6.0 to 7.0. These include some refinements to power management, whereby Doze has been improved with an interim mode used after the screen has been locked for five minutes. The application switching screen now has a “clear all” button, which was lacking from older versions of Android but something manufacturers frequently included in their own customized interface. Google also improved the notification shade and quick setting toggles, plus the Emoji engine has been updated to support the latest Unicode 9 standards and symbols. However, we do not expect one of the features introduced into Android 7.0 Nougat, that of seamless updating, to be included with the Motorola Moto G4 Plus update. This is because seamless updating requires another partition being created on the device, which will require the smartphone being connected to a desktop computer and something Google do not consider necessary for existing smartphone customers. It is possible that Motorola, or other manufacturers, will release a desktop companion application designed to enable seamless updating.
We do not know how long the Android 7.0 Nougat soak test for the Motorola Moto G4 Plus will last, as these things may depend on any issues customers experience and if Motorola release an interim fix. As already explained, we do not expect to hear anything back from unofficial channels but the next news is likely to be from Motorola Brazil confirming that the update is now available. However, it is good to see that the software is close to being ready and customers can look forward to receiving the update hopefully in the next few weeks. It especially welcome that a relatively low end Motorola device is high up in the queue to receive the update.