The first official Android 12 update for a 5G Nokia phone has arrived
Nokia brand licensee HMD Global may no longer be as fast or as reliable as it was just a couple of years ago in terms of software support for older smartphones, but the company is still able to beat many other established brands to the Android 12 punch for at least one device.
Somewhat surprisingly, we're talking about the Nokia X20, a 5G-enabled mid-ranger that's officially started to receive stable (hopefully) Android 12 goodies in a bunch of countries around the world on Tuesday, December 14.
While the brand's last true flagship has seen daylight all the way back in the spring of 2019, scoring a single major OS promotion, we were kind of expecting other mid-end models, like the Nokia G50 or X100, to jump on the Android 12 bandwagon before the X20.
That's primarily because, unlike the X100 or G50, the Nokia X20 5G is not officially available stateside, which obviously explains the absence of the US from this otherwise lengthy list of "Wave 1" markets set to receive over-the-air Android 12 add-ons and performance enhancements by Friday, December 17:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Croatia (Tele2, Vipnet)
- Denmark
- Egypt
- Estonia
- Finland
- Germany
- Hong Kong
- Hungary (Telenor HU)
- Iceland
- Iran
- Iraq
- Jordan
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malaysia
- Netherlands (Tele2 NL, VF, T-Mobile)
- Norway
- Portugal
- Romania
- Slovakia (O2 - SK)
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
Powered by a Snapdragon 480 processor, just like the aforementioned G50 and X100, as well as the G300 or XR20, the X20 was the only Nokia-branded phone to get a public Android 12 developer preview program, which makes us hopeful that the official and "final" update will indeed be as smooth and as stable as these things come.
At the same time, we probably shouldn't expect any other Nokia handsets to leave Android 11 behind by the end of the year, although miracles do have a tendency of happening much more frequently than usual during the holiday season.
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