Huawei’s 2017 flagship smartphone, the P10, holds a special place on this website because it is the very first flagship smartphone that we covered – when this site, in its current setup, was barely a few hours old. After yesterday, it will become even more special to everyone who bought it nearly 2 years ago and has pretty much held on to it even as Huawei released successors – the P20 last year and the P30 just yesterday – that stole its shine.
According to reports, the yesteryear flagship device is apparently receiving an update that upgrades it to the latest version of Android, 9 Pie.
Initial reports from early in the week indicated that the update was hitting the standard variant of the P10 as well as the Plus model only in China. However, the update has since been sighted in more regions far away from China so Kenyan users can cross their fingers that the same happens to their devices.
This may come as a surprise to many but Huawei is slowly building a reputation for updating its devices for at least 2 years, something that most Android device makers commit to doing but actually never do.
Like with the P10, last year, Huawei released the Android Oreo update for another 2-year-old device, the indefatigable Huawei Mate 9. That device is also tipped to get an Android Pie update with beta versions being reported in various regions towards the end of last year.
With the update, it’s been a full cycle for the P10 as it launched back in April 2017 with version 5.1 of Huawei’s custom overlay, Emotion UI, built on top of Android Oreo.
Clocking in at just over 3 gigabytes, the update the Huawei P10 and P10 are receiving bump it to the latest EMUI 9 and brings with it long-overdue updates to most system applications and services like Huawei Share, which debuted with EMUI 5 on the Mate 9 back in November 2016, while also improving on overall responsiveness of the device, improved app launch times and more.
It is not clear at this point if the update to the Huawei Share function could mean that P10 and P10 Plus users who also own Huawei’s latest Matebook laptop are able to use the feature to transfer files between their phone and their computer at the tap of the latter’s chin as demonstrated with newer devices at Mobile World Congress 2019.
Other features that users can anticipate include Huawei’s own take on Digital Wellbeing called “digital balance” as well as some improvements to the battery life.
The update is live in several regions and comes in at a bit over 3 GB. It offers Huawei’s latest design language as well as updates to several first-party apps like the Recorder and Huawei share. Other notable features include improved app launch times, reverse image search, screen time and overall stability enhancements.
The Huawei P10 went on sale in Kenya in May 2017 with the Plus variant following it a few weeks later.
As can be expected, there is no news on whether Android Pie will ever make it to the featherweight member of the P10 family, the Huawei P10 Lite which made quite some inroads in the country.
