When will my phone get Android 7.0 Nougat? - July 2016 edition

This being the early days of Nougat, with not a single device yet running the software, we're yet to come across manufacturers' roadmaps for their respective lineups. In other words, beyond the freshest devices that recently hit the market—that will therefore be a priority—we have no clue as to the scope of their intentions, let alone estimated time frames. That doesn't stop us from using past data in order to make predictions, however.

As some of you might know, this isn't the first time we broach the subject of Android software updates. Last year, we dug out historic data on the timing of the official updates (read: not third-party, custom Android ROMs), using it to compile a table of how it went for each of the majors in the Android world. By supplementing that same data base with Marshmallow figures, we'll have intel spanning KitKat all the way through the latest official version. With that info in hand, we have what we need to extrapolate and make some educated guesses.

As is plainly obvious, and as we've recently discussed, Android Marshmallow is propagating at a noticeably slower rate than preceding major updates, even when talking about the industry major's flagship lines. Motorola, for example, which has consistently been the quickest to push the new goodies, took 3 months to transition to Marshmallow, compared to 1 month or so for both KitKat and Lollipop.

Using this data, we can make the following calculations (these are approximations; only flagship lines taken into account):

Putting these into context, we can make the following conclusions:

Given Google's promise of making Android 7.0 Nougat official by Q3 of 2016 (meaning end of September at worst), we may be looking at an earlier release compared to previous years—if only by a little. Going back to the data we've compiled, if we were the betting kind, we'd wager on Motorola delivering on Nougat first, followed by HTC. It's a toss-up between Samsung and LG, while Sony is the sure loser—though that's also an opportunity for the struggling Japanese company to re-assure fans that it's as invested as its competitors. Obviously, should Sony end up surprising us, it'll be a precedent, as data is consistent in that the Xperia maker just isn't as quick to bring the latest and greatest to its devices.

To summarize, using our data for a forecast and end of September as our potential release date: