Here’s some good news for owners of LG’s G3 smartphone: Your phone will be among the first to get an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop. Assuming you live in Poland, anyway.
According to the company, it will roll out an update to Lollipop to G3 users in Poland this week, and release the update “[in] other key markets in the near future.” LG didn’t specify what it means by “near future,” however, so it could conceivably take anywhere from a few days to a few months for it to make it onto LG phones here in the US.
The story behind the story: Fragmentation may not be the fatal flaw that some expected it to be with Android—it’s a non-issue for many people most of the time, and it’s arguably one of Android’s strengths in that it’s resulted in a wide variety of hardware and software options. But updates are one area where fragmentation still becomes an issue. Ironically, enthusiasts who bought Google Nexus devices because of the promise of speedy Android updates are watching third-party phones land Lollipop first.
The Lollipop waiting game continues
And so we wait. Despite the limited release of LG’s upcoming Lollipop update, though, there are some signs that we’ll start to see some updates soon. On Friday, Motorola published–then pulled —release notes for its Android Lollipop update for the second-generation Moto X. This seems to suggest that Motorola is close to having an update, but you’ll have to wait at least a little longer.
But if you’re feeling daring—and have a compatible Nexus device, the Sony Experia Z, or the Samsung Galaxy S3—the folks at XDA Developers have cobbled together a jury-rigged build of Lollipop for you to try. It’s a potentially buggy build, though, and installing unofficial builds can be a challenge, so it isn’t for the faint of heart.