Nokia 9 PureView Won’t Get Android 11 Update; Users To Get 50% Discount on XR20 Upgrade as Consolation

Last Updated on March 14, 2022 by Rupesh Patil

Not long after HMD Global resurrected the Nokia brand, the company had made a name for itself in the Android smartphone space with its propensity for quick software updates. However, that opinion won’t be shared by Nokia 9 PureView smartphone owners. The camera-centric phone won’t be getting the oft-promised Android 11 update after a delay of more than a year since the release of the new operating system.

Nokia 9 PureView Android 11 Update Won’t Be Released

Nokia’s flagship smartphone had launched in 2019 with Android 9.0 (Pie), with the Android 10 update being rolled out months later in December 2019. The Android 11 update, however, proved to be a tough nut to crack. Nokia had promised the update to PureView owners by Q2 2021, just a month after Android 11’s release in September 2020.

The Finnish smartphone maker, however, had been experiencing teething troubles while porting the Android 11 update to the Nokia 9 PureView smartphones. Apparently, fundamental changes to the way the new software version handles the camera subsystem, combined with the older SoC of the phone, made it difficult to integrate the camera-centric features of the PureView device.

Nokia eventually pushed the Android 11 update to Q3 2021. But now that we are in the fourth quarter of the year, the company has finally conceded defeat and announced that PureView users will not get the promised Android 11 update.

The company contends that updating PureView phones to Android 11 without all the camera bells and whistles would be an unacceptable compromise, owing to the inherent software conflicts with the phone’s elaborate camera setup. Nokia 9 PureView users, however, will continue to receive promised Android security updates.

Nokia 9 PureView Users Can Get 50% Discount On Nokia XR20

However, Nokia 9 PureView owners determined to use Android 11 can pick up the Nokia XR20 for a cool 50% discount. The company is offering a substantial discount to PureView owners as a consolation for its broken promise. The offer can be redeemed by Nokia 9 PureView owners by visiting the Nokia 9 upgrade portal and furnishing the IMEI number of the existing handset.

The discount is applied to the MSRP (or the recommended retail price) of the Nokia XR20 rugged phone, which is pegged at ₹46,999 as of this writing. That means the same phone can be purchased for ₹23,499 for owners of the Nokia 9 PureView phones. The offer is valid until March 2022.

The company promises three years of software updates for the new XR20 phone, but one wonders how much water that promise holds given the PureView software update debacle.