I still don't have Android 7.0 on my top-of-the-line Galaxy S7 Edge in Lebanon, and that makes me fume each time I see another device being updated to Nougat while I'm stuck on Marshmallow. But it also makes me appreciate OTA updates even more when they're issued for lesser known devices and by lesser known companies.

A great example is the Aquaris X5 Plus, a Snapdragon 652 phone with 5" Full HD display and 2/3GB of RAM released in Europe in July of 2016, that perfectly embodies the midrange market. You wouldn't expect a device like this to be updated from Marshmallow to Nougat 7.0, let alone 7.1.1, but here we are talking about this very topic.

BQ announced it on its Facebook page saying that the update is now available but might take a while to roll to every device. (It can be manually applied with the BQ Flash Tool though if you follow the link below in the source.) It also claims that this is the first smartphone in the world outside of the Google ecosystem (Nexus and Pixel) to run Android 7.1.1. That may be technically true, but OnePlus has 7.1.1 in open beta and new phones with 7.1.1 will probably be available very soon.

It's a brief period of time where BQ can claim dibs and, honestly, I'm not too annoyed at them for touting their horn. The race to fast updates is one I'd like to see heat up, so more competition is good and more small companies putting big ones to shame can only benefit us all. Go on BQ, update all your devices to Android 7.1.1 and we'll applaud you each and every time.

UPDATE: 2017/03/16 4:41am PDT BY

This post originally stated that BQ Deutschland that had issued the update, but it seems that it has rolled out to several countries as well, including Spain where BQ's home-turf is. The article has been edited to clarify that.

Source: BQ Deutschland Facebook page, BQ Nougat featuresBQ Support (manual download)

Thanks: Bastian Gebhardt