HMD denies the recent report about Android 9 update delay on Nokia 8

Juho Sarvikas CPO HMD Nokia

Product chief at HMD has denied the report that claimed company’s intentional delay of delivering software update to several Nokia devices of last year.

A recent report claimed that HMD – now a licensee of Nokia phones, purposely withheld Android Pie update for Nokia 8 and several other devices. It was claimed that the company did it in hopes of boosting the sales of newly released Nokia 8.1. The claim also included that the Nokia 8 owners may have to wait until December 31st at least to get their hands on with the latest Android software.

Denying the claim, Juho Sarvikas – the Chief Product Officer at HMD Global, responds that the company would never do such a thing. Instead he briefed that a dedication is required for each chipset and every other product. He also wants you to believe them as they are fully focused to their work and pushing updates as fast as possible.

Well the later part of the denial is sure to be believed as the company actually has delivered its promises. This could just be an exception, or even if the earlier reports were true to any extent, a month delay shouldn’t hurt consumers. Specially when they are already among the first to try software updates.

If you look at the responses followed by Juho’s denial, it looks like that the Nokia users are divided. However most of them believe the report to be false for a logical reason of Nokia 8.1 not being a successor to Nokia 8.

Another Nokia fan blog – NPU had put a poll on twitter asking its followers to vote as if they would buy Nokia 8.1 over Nokia 8 only because it runs Pie? Interestingly, most of them rejected to buy a smartphone only for a newer software update. Check recent poll and responses.

Nokia 8 Android 9

You can also see the same response from Juho, under the poll above. He apologised for the delay but also hinted that more news is on its way.

Whatever it be, one may hope now that HMD would push the update before the end of December. Perhaps only to deny the report effectively? That makes sense, no? do let us know about your opinion in the comments below.

Update: Twitter poll was added.