Motorola cancels plans to release Pie for its last true flagship, the Moto Z2 Force

Motorola released the Moto Z2 Force two years ago. The phone launched on Android 7.1.1 Nougat and received the update to Android Oreo after. Owners of the Z2 Force may have had hopes of getting the Android Pie update but Motorola has now dashed those hopes brutally, as it's confirmed that the flagship will not be getting Pie after all.

It's not quite as clear-cut as one may assume, though. For one, the company will still send out the Pie update to Verizon users. Users of AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are out of luck, however, and will remain on Android Oreo. In the official announcement, the company clarifies that Verizon models would get the update because Pie is required for the 5G Moto Mod.

This policy appears to be specific to US models, so we expect unlocked, non-US models to get the Pie update just fine. It's still a kick in the teeth of users of three of the four major US carriers that their devices won't be getting the update, even though the flagship was advertised with the promise of getting two major updates. The Z2 Force was Motorola's last device to feature a current-gen premium SoC, with successors like the Moto Z3 and Z4 being more of sub-premium phones than anything.

This comes after Motorola confirmed that the new Z4 would receive just one major OS update. The company used to have a decent reputation with software support, and it's something of a shame to see it completely abandon that.