Owners of the HTC One M7 will be glad to know that Android 5.0 Lollipop is officially hitting the airwaves for their beloved handsets.

The first to receive the HTC One M7 Android 5.0 Lollipop update are owners in Europe. HTC's Jeff Gordon took to Twitter recently to hint that the upgrade was rolling out, and users have since confirmed that they can download Lollipop for their HTC Ones. This, of course, applies only to unlocked models, thanks to Android fragmentation. As always, the firmware is rolling out in batches, so some users and regions will get it before others.

The Lollipop update for the HTC One M7 weighs in at around 800MB, and standard procedure applies. If you do get a download notification, be sure to back up your phone and have it charged or plugged in. It's still early in the rollout phase, so there haven't been too many reports of major bugs, unlike with the Google-branded Nexus series of devices.

HTC Ones in the United States, however, will have to wait a little longer. Most HTC One M7 owners in the United States have carrier-tied models, meaning their device's usability is contingent on using a specific wireless service provider. None of the major four in the United States (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) have released Lollipop for the HTC One M7, although T-Mobile does hint it could be out soon.

In order to keep customers more in tune with when they can expect Android 5.0 Lollipop for their device, T-Mobile launched a support page where the company divulges the status of the firmware's development. Clicking on the HTC One M7 model shows that Android 5.0 Lollipop is currently in the testing stage, indicating that HTC has already provided U.S. carriers with the update -- it's now up to them to push it out.

So why do some get an Android update before others? For starters, OEMs like HTC have to tinker with Google's original source code and sync it to run with their in-house interfaces (HTC's is Sense). This alone can take weeks, even months in some cases. Carrier-tied models have to then wait even longer as carriers often add their own bloatware and optimize the firmware for their networks. Carriers have stepped up and acknowledged how important it is to give customers timely updates, but there's still quite a bit of lag from the moment Google releases a new version of Android.

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