Huawei has often been criticized for its heavy EMUI skin that runs on top of stock Android, with many arguing that it’s the major reason some devices take ages to receive software updates. But the Chinese vendor has always done a pretty good job keeping the custom skin up to date, no matter how late.
This stage is set for the Huawei P20 Lite, a device that has been in the Kenyan market for a year now. Launched with Android Oreo on board, some P20 Lite owners expected to make the switch to Android Pie before the end of Q1 2019, yet here we are.
In response to a tweet by a concerned user, Huawei now says the P20 Lite will be upgraded to Pie with EMUI 9.0 in July 2019. This means we still have at least two months to this date, which is quite a long but necessary wait if you are to get stable software with no bugs.
Hi! Thank you for your interest in EMUI 9.0. We are currently developing and testing EMUI 9.0 (based on Android 9 Pie) for Huawei P20 Lite and you will be receiving the update in July'19.
— EMUI (@HuaweiEMUI) April 8, 2019
Huawei has also confirmed that the P20 Lite, known elsewhere as the Huawei Nova 3e, will be upgraded to EMUI 9.1. Whether this is the version that will bring Pie to the P20 Lite is still in the balance, especially since the tweet talks of EMUI 9.0 and not the newer version.
BTW, the P20 Lite has already been succeeded by the P30 Lite, which started selling a few days ago alongside the premium P30 and P30 Pro.