This story is being continuously updated….new updates are being added at the bottom…..

At PiunikaWeb, we often mock Xiaomi for their shotgun marketing strategy as well as torturous naming scheme. Believe it or not, Huawei (along with their sub-brand Honor) is actually a worthy competitor of Xiaomi in this contest.

Take the example of Honor 7X. Released back in 2017, this mid-ranger phone was powered by Huawei’s in-house HiSilicon Kirin 659 platform. The same phone was also sold in the US, but there it was known as Huawei Mate SE.

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Honor 7X/Huawei Mate SE

Although the Chinese telecom giant is not a quality performer in naming their phones, they are darn good in providing software updates. Despite being a low-to-mid tier phone, Huawei rolled out EMUI 8.0.0 (based on Android Oreo) for the phone and simultaneously enabled Project Treble support.

For a phone originally launched with Android 7.1 Nougat on board, this is rather surprising. In fact, the phone maker started beta enrollment for Android Pie/EMUI 9.0 for various regions, including India.

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While Huawei is targeting the month of July 2019 as the tentative timeline of rolling out the stable Pie update for the Honor 7X, beta builds started to pop up since the end of May.

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Honor 7X (codename ‘BND’) Android Pie beta participation app

To reduce the server load, only a handful of the applicants are generally selected as for testing the beta builds. However, it looks like Huawei/Honor is pretty much ready to deploy the final (or release candidate) EMUI 9 (9.1 to be precise) update for the Honor 7X, as new firmware packages can now be seen in their update servers.

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List of EMUI 9 based firmware for Honor 7X from MTT Firmware Finder (Image source: Honor India forum)

While these ‘FullOTA-MF’ (multi file) packages are enough to install the actual operating system on your phone, you need some specialized tools (or paid services) to use them. Interestingly, a number of users are reportedly getting the 9.1.0.130 build as EMUI 9.1/Android 9.0 Pie OTA in last few days.

honor_7x_pie_9.1.0.130_ota_changelog

The changelog does not mention anything other than the Android Pie identity of itself. We hope Honor 7X users (including Huawei Mate SE owners in the USA) will be able to taste the sweetness of Pie in near future via stable update.

Update 1 (July 19)

Honor India has now updated that EMUI 9.1 for Honor 7X device is planned to be rolled out on July 30.

We would like to inform you that our software team has confirmed the compatibility of device with EMUI 9.1 and we will start rolling out the update in small batches tentatively by 30-Jul-19.

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Honor 7X

Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

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