Last week, Motorola released its list of smartphones that would be seeing the update to Android 8.0 Oreo – of course there were no firm release dates, as expected. And noticeably absent was the Moto G4 line of smartphones that the company debuted last year. This led to many complaints towards Motorola about the decision. Not only because the devices are only a year old, but also because Motorola advertised with the Moto G4 that it would get updates to Android N and Android O. Now, Motorola has stated that the Moto G4 series will get Android Oreo.
Motorola stated that it is “general practice for the Moto G family to get one major OS upgrade per device”, which sounds a bit odd, considering most smartphones are guaranteed updates for two years, these days. But nevertheless, Motorola is calling it a marketing error with the marketing material for the Moto G4 Plus. Motorola is doing the right thing here though, and it will keep its promise and bring Android Oreo to the Moto G4 Plus. Motorola did mention that since this is an unplanned upgrade, it’ll take time for the company to add this into its upgrade schedule.
Since Lenovo has taken over the reigns at Motorola, there have been quite a few changes, specifically in the software area. While Motorola was under Google’s umbrella, Motorola was pushing out updates rather quickly. Now, Motorola is somewhat slow to push out software updates, and isn’t even committing to pushing out monthly security updates, instead these get pushed out every few months. Now we’re seeing that the Moto G series is only slated to get one major upgrade, which is going to change quite a few people’s minds about picking up a Moto G smartphone in the future. While Motorola isn’t obligated to provide updates for two years, many would prefer to get updates for up to two years after a device has been announced – or in the case of the Moto G4 Plus, just a little over a year. We’ll have to wait and see if this continues with the Moto G5 and future Moto G smartphones.