Huawei has announced that their Ascend P6 handset will get Android 4.4, sometime in January. The device, once holding the title of “world’s thinnest phone”, will leapfrog Android 4.3 and head straight for KitKat. That’s great news, at least for the Chinese market.
For those unfamiliar, the Ascend P6 is most known for being the first super slim Android phones. It’s also known for its Emotion UI. While not quite as bulky as TouchWiz, Emotion does layer Android pretty severely. Of course, that’s all subjective to each user, but it does signal an interesting shift from the normal routine.
With a skinned device updating so quickly to Android 4.4, we could be seeing the end of long waits for updates, or even worse: phones not updating altogether. With an Android overlay such as Emotion, TouchWiz, Sense, etc. it creates extra work for the OEM to update. Whether Huawei is just on their game with Android 4.4, or if KitKat really is that easy for OEMs to use, we don’t know right now. What we do know is, this sets a precedence.
Huawei hasn’t made clear if this update is for the Chinese market, or the world stage. They also didn’t mention any other handsets, which could mean they’ve reached the end of their cycle, or Huawei is just refusing to update them for reasons unknown. Aside from the P6, Huawei has a litany of mid-range devices. To truly gauge the ease of use for OEMs as it relates to KitKat, we’d like to see those updated, too.
