Asus ROG Phone receives official Android Pie update at long last
Asus may have managed to beat the likes of Samsung, LG, and Sony to the punch with stable Android 10 updates rolled out for not one but two different handsets already, but the Taiwan-based company actually has a couple of loose ends to tie up from its messier and significantly slower Android Pie delivery efforts.
Usually, we’d welcome this type of long overdue news by saying something along the lines of “all’s well that ends well”, but because we’re talking about a hardcore gaming-friendly smartphone released roughly a year ago at a starting price of $900 with a powerful Snapdragon 845 processor under the hood, it’s pretty much impossible to focus on anything besides the inexplicable delay.
For crying out loud, this bad boy made its commercial debut after Android 9.0 and it’s barely being upgraded to that OS version after the Android 10 public release. Normally, we’d expect a high-end device like the first-gen Asus ROG Phone to also score a second major software update at some point, but right now, we can’t even dare to dream of something like that.
Ridiculously enough, this absolute monster of a gaming handset is still available in the US at 900 bucks with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, even after the release of a second edition at the exact same price with Android 9.0 Pie pre-installed. Hopefully, the ROG Phone II will follow the ZenFone 6 and ZenFone 5Z on the Android 10 bandwagon before long, although that’s unlikely to provide much comfort for first-gen owners.
You’ll also want to keep in mind the official Android P update kicked off today may need a little extra time to reach every single Asus ROG Phone user around the world, which means the wait is technically not over for everyone just yet.