Rumour | Huawei fuels speculation that it has binned the P20 Lite after one software update, and thousands of people are not happy about it

Huawei takes its time with delivering software updates, as the EMUI 10 rollout for the P30 Pro has demonstrated. While the company likes to be one of the first OEMs to release its custom version of Google's latest OS, it then takes months to deliver OS upgrades to its recent handsets.

However, while the P20 and P20 Pro should have now started receiving Android 10 in most regions, there is no such luck for the P20 Lite. To be clear, by P20 Lite we mean the Kirin 659-powered device that Huawei released in March 2018 and not the Kirin 710 version that the company released last summer.

Released running Android 8.0 Oreo, the original P20 Lite should have been in line for a second OS upgrade. However, Huawei has confirmed that the P20 Lite is currently "not on the list" of devices destined to receive EMUI 10. Additionally, the company has moved the device to quarterly security patch updates. By contrast, the P20 and P20 Pro are still receiving monthly security updates. Anecdotally, Huawei does not issue monthly security patch updates even to its latest flagships. Some P30 Pro handsets, for instance, still have the October 2019 security patch installed, which is over five months old at the time of writing.

Understandably, people are disappointed that Huawei has ceased software support for the P20 Lite after one OS upgrade. Accordingly, several petitions have appeared on Change.org demanding that Huawei reverses its decision. While the petitions have well over a thousand signatories, we doubt that Huawei will relent. On the contrary, the P20 Lite appears to be part of a wider Kirin 659 cull, as the equally-equipped Nova 3i has already shown.