The LG Velvet will be the company's only device running Android 11 by April 2021

LG began testing its version of Android 11 on the Velvet last month, albeit only in South Korea. Owners of the handset were invited to join the LG OS Preview Program, although with no indication of when Android 11 would make it out of beta. LG has since confirmed its initial Android 11 update plan though, and it is a barren one.

According to the update notice, LG plans only to bring Android 11 to the Velvet this quarter. Correspondingly, other recent flagships like the V60 ThinQ and Wing 5G will be left on Android 10 until April at the earliest. The G8 ThinQ and G8X ThinQ are due Android 11 too, but LG's past performance suggests that it may be a while before these devices final OS update arrives.

Additionally, LG tends to take months between updating South Korean handsets and those in other countries. The South Korean version of the Wing 5G gained software features in November that the US model has only just received, for example, as we have also reported. Hence, it could take LG well into Q2 2021 before it upgrades the Velvet to Android 11 globally. If that proves the case, then we may see many LG smartphones stuck on Android 10 when Google releases Android 12.

In short, LG continues to outdo itself in being awful at delivering software updates. While many Android OEMs have started upgrading some of their devices to Android 11, LG seems content with falling short of the competition. So much for its Software Upgrade Center that it announced nearly three years ago.