One of the best budget smartphone releases of the second half of 2017 was the Xiaomi Mi A1, one of the few smartphones out there that can claim to belong to Google’s endangered Android One family.
One of the biggest draws to Android One devices is that there’s the promise that they will be on the front seat when it comes to accessing the oft-illusive Android updates.
In the case of the Mi A1, unlike in past Android One devices, Google wasn’t directly responsible for the software on the device and the updates meant for it. Instead, Xiaomi, the device’s maker is in charge. That essentially means some bit of a delay when Google releases the latest and the greatest to its lineup of devices (Nexus and Pixel). So, while we knew that the Mi A1 won’t be going the way of its contemporaries who will never be getting any Oreo goodies, we were not so sure when that was going to happen. Thankfully, Xiaomi made sure that at least some of the users of its device weren’t going to cross over into the new year rocking Nougat. The company started seeding Android Oreo to the Mi A1 on New Year’s Eve.
We're ending the year with an O! #MiA1 users, stay tuned as we're rolling out your long-awaited update in batches but make sure you're already on the latest December update (7.12.19) to receive Android O! pic.twitter.com/GhRtDnyJn4
— Xiaomi (@Xiaomi) December 31, 2017
Unfortunately, the update is yet to hit Mi A1 devices in the country. At least as far as a quick check on some of our readers with the device is concerned. Since it’s barely a few days since it started rolling out, our fingers are crossed that everyone who risked getting the device, which is officially unavailable in the Kenyan market, gets it before we wrap up the first week of 2018.
