Better late than never? Moto G4 Plus gets Android 8.1 Oreo update

Motorola is now rolling out the Android 8.1 Oreo update to the Moto G4 Plus. The company announced the deployment in a recent post on its U.S. support website (via XDA), more than 16 months after confirming Oreo for the handset.

The update delivers the December 2018 security patches along with expected Oreo goodness like adaptive icons, notification dots, and picture-in-picture mode (and it’s been a while since I typed that!).

If you haven’t been notified about the update on your handset already, head to your phone’s settings menu and hit About phone > System Updates to see if it’s available. It’s unlikely to hit all devices at once, so you may have to be patient. But hey, what’s another week or so after 16 months, right?

A win for Motorola?

Motorola never said the update would be timely. In fact, it warned it would take time. Nevertheless, Motorola has stuck to the promise made in that September 2017 blog post. We should be thankful, right?

We could say Motorola should be commended for supporting a phone released in May 2016. The first Google Pixel hadn’t even been announced then. It was a different world. You will struggle to find another mid-2016 handset receiving such a big update in 2019.

However, you could equally argue the Moto G4 Plus was entitled to Android 8.1 Oreo — only its second major OS upgrade anyway — and that it should have been far earlier. Many Moto G4 Plus owners may already have ditched their phone for a newer model by now, and are potentially waiting on the more recent update, Android Pie. It’s possible that few people will even benefit from this update now.

What may sting further is those who have other Moto G4 series phones like the standard model or the Moto G4 Play, which have so far only received one update from Marshmallow to Nougat. We still don’t know for certain if either of these will be upgraded.

So, let me ask where you stand on this: are you happy to see this update arrive now or is it just a slap in the face? Let me know in the comments.