While a few other countries have already been graced with Android 4.2.2 on the HTC One, North American owners of the OEM’s flagship device are still waiting.
Turns out there may be a good reason for it. According to Jason Mackenzie, President of HTC North America, the handset may skip Android 4.2 altogether and jump from 4.1.2 to 4.3.
In responding to a tweet asking for clarification as to why the HTC One Developer Edition — which is only sold in the US — hasn’t been bumped to 4.2 yet, Mackenzie responded, “4.2 is minor update so decided to go straight to 4.3. [It] is so close. And 4.2.2 offered limited customer benefit.”
While this does not necessarily mean that HTC Canada will choose to go this path — the Canadian version, while physically identical to the AT&T model, has software more akin to the European variant — it may stand to explain why the 4.2 update is so late in arriving.
Either way, Canadians likely don’t want to wait much longer. The HTC One was released in April, and is still running software that is approaching 14 months old. As good as Sense 5.0 may be, it stings that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is running Android 4.2, while the Nexus 4 is running Google’s newest Android 4.3 software.
Update: That is exactly what’s happening. According to Mackenzie, the 4.3 update is currently being certified and will be released before the end of September.
