It's now been a little over a month since the international variants of the HTC One began receiving an update to Android 4.2.2, which brought with it goodies like lock screen widgets and camera improvements. Unfortunately for anyone that ponied up for an unlocked or Developer Edition HTC One, those models have yet to receive the same update. There's some good news today for those folks, though, as an HTC executive has revealed that his company's got something even better in store.
Jason Mackenzie, HTC's President of Global Sales, revealed on Twitter today that the unlocked and Dev Edition HTC One variants will be skipping the Android 4.2.2 update and will instead be bumped straight up to Android 4.3. Mackenzie explained the decision by calling 4.2 a "minor update" with "limited customer benefit."
What about the U.S. carrier-branded versions, you ask? Mackenzie has confirmed that they'll be bumped up to Android 4.3, too. That's not exactly a shock considering that the One is HTC's flagship smartphone, but it's still good to get word straight from the company itself. As for when all of these Android 4.3 updates will begin rolling out, Mackenzie says that HTC is aiming to have all U.S. SKUs of the One updated by the end of September.
I'm sure that some owners of the Developer Edition and unlocked HTC Ones are disappointed that their carrier-free handsets are still on Android 4.1 while the international variants have been on 4.2.2 for some time now. HTC will soon reward U.S.-based One owners for their patience, though, and I'm betting that many folks will forget all about that wait once they're running the latest version of Android. Variables like carrier testing could end up pushing some of the 4.3 updates past HTC's end of September target, but at least we know the freshest flavor of Jelly Bean is close.
Via Android Central, @JasonMacHTC (1), (2), (3), (4)
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