Research: Nokia phones most often run on new Android versions, LG least

Nokia phones are most often upgraded to new versions of Android. LG and Alcatel devices receive this least often on average. This is evident from market research into the update policy of smartphone manufacturers.

Phones from Nokia after the fall of 2018 have support for Android 9 Pie in 96 percent of the cases, according to research by Counterpoint. That looked at how smartphone manufacturers implemented the latest Android updates on phones. In addition to Nokia, phones from Xiaomi and Huawei also score well.

The survey looked at phones sold between Q3 2018 and Q2 2019. The researchers looked at how many phone models from the companies certain Android versions were available for. At Nokia that’s the best; there is Android 9 Pie available for 96 percent of the devices. For the other four percent, up to Android 8.1 Oreo is available. At Samsung, 89 percent of the phones are now supported by Pie, and seven percent by Android 8. Xiaomi and Huawei are also doing well with 84 and 82 percent respectively.

Striking is the large gap that falls after those four manufacturers. With Lenovo devices, only 43 percent of the devices can use the latest Android version. LG and Alcatel score the worst, and Tecno, which is mainly sold in Asia. Less than a fifth of those devices currently support Pie.

The survey does not reveal how many users actually install the update. It is not entirely surprising that Nokia comes out so well in the survey. Many of the company’s devices fall under the Android One program. That means that the smartphone maker guarantees at least three years of security updates, and standard Android updates for two years.