Lollipop for Wind Ascend Mate2

At the beginning of the month Huawei released Android Lollipop as a preview to work through some of the bugs.  This is about the time that most of us Ascend Mate 2 started to rejoice and scrambled to the website to download the update only to find that it is ONLY for the international version of the device. We the Mate 2 owners that bought from a carrier sat and watched while others got all the lollipop goodies that came with the upgrade... We were a bit bitter and envious.

Now with some help from a post on XDA,  thanks to Kostyan_nsk we all have a way to make our phones international and upgrade to the lollipop preview.

Go to the above post and follow the steps outlined within to upgrade your Wind Ascend Mate 2 to the latest and greatest.

I can't vouch that the upgrade works yet as I have not had time to do it myself,  but it seems that others Who have tried on XDA have had luck upgrading their phone to lollipop using the instructions.

Before you start,  one thing you might want to note is that there are reports that the battery life is not as good as it was on Jellybean.

Update 07/14/15:

I have taken the plunge and have performed this update on my Ascend Mate 2. I have to say that the process is VERY straight forward and almost fool proof (I messed up a couple of times).

I can confirm that there is more power consumption post-upgrade,  but I also have to say this upgrade (even being a preview) is TOTALLY WORTH IT.  Seriously,  it is like getting the phone you really wanted and the camera and email improvements alone are worth the upgrade.

I will do a separate post that will go over the upgrade and an in-depth review of Lollipop on the Ascend Mate 2.

No Lollipop for Wind Mobile Ascend Mate 2

It was recently announced by Huawei that the preview version of Lollipop was available for the Ascend Mate 2, complete with instructions and a link to downgrade.

I was super excited when I heard the news, went right to the site and downloaded the 1gb B309.zip from the site to my SD card ready to finally have something different from the same OS I have had since I bought the phone from Wind in October 2014.

Unzipped the file and made the nearly 2gb dload folder and quickly powered off my device so I could go into TWRP to make a backup of what I had before I leave Jellybean (actually did this twice because your phone will not boot into recovery with a folder named dload present). 

Once backup was complete (and dload folder renamed)  I restarted my phone. I saw the update screen,  was feeling good for a half second and then 'Software install failed!'.  I thought maybe it had something to do with the download so I tried the download again,  but no change.

As it turns out,  with the little bit of information on the internet since the release of the update, there is only for the US version of the phone,  any variant other than the US phone does not get this update.  The Huawei site actually says as much, if I had taken the time to read and compare, the build numbers for the phones that can update are:

* MT2-L03 V100R001C00B126
* MT2-L03 V100R001C00B148

My phone from Wind has a different number:

* MT2-L03V100R001C113B128

Huawei confirms here that my specific model does not have an update at this time.

Hopefully they will have an update for the rest of us some time soon, I can't imagine the devices could be so different that they would not update the others. Hoping that they release to all devices when they move from preview to final.