Earlier today, Jason Mackenzie, the President of HTC America, officially revealed on Twitter that HTC’s flagship smartphone will not meet its self-imposed 90-day deadline for its much-anticipated Android 4.4 KitKat update to touch down in the U.S. and Canada. However, according to Mackenize, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks for the HTC One updates to be complete.

The One was released back in March, 2013, and features a stunning 4.7-inch Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen, a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 32/64GB of internal storage (not expandable), a 4-megapixel UltraPixel rear-facing camera and a 2,300 mAh battery.

The full changelog for the upcoming Android 4.4.2 KitKat update can be seen below:

• Android 4.4, KitKat: Android 4.4.2, KitKat, is the latest release of the Android platform. KitKat includes enhancements such as restyled status and navigation bars, a new full-screen mode, color emoji support, improved closed captioning support, stronger security, smarter power use, and more tools and capabilities for better app development.
• Phone dialer: Improved the phone app with the ability to look up contacts directly from the dial pad, see and tap frequent contacts, and search your corporate directory easily.
• Camera – Focus and exposure: Enhanced the “touch to focus” option with a new circular, on screen control that can be dragged by your finger around the viewfinder to adjust a photo’s focus and exposure.
• Gallery – Photo editing: Added new photo editing options to the Gallery app including new filter effects, draw on your photos, advanced cropping, and adjustments to color, exposure, contrast and more.
• Printing documents and pictures: Added support for printing photos, Google Docs, GMail messages, and other content via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and hosted services like Google Cloud Print and HP ePrinters.
• Hangouts – SMS/MMS support: Incorporated a new version of Google Hangouts that supports integrated SMS/MMS messaging. Hangouts can be set as the default SMS app under Settings > Wireless > Default SMS app.
• Accessory: support Added support for Square credit card reader.

Be sure to check back for more information as we’ll let you know as soon as the update starts rolling out. Also, you can read Mackenzie’s full statement below:

Team HTC One,

We’ve always been inspired by our customers, and because of our legacy as a pioneer of smartphones, we are fortunate to have the most technology-savvy, discerning, and passionate customers in the industry.  While we continue to be a leader in Android innovation and have done “OK” with software updates, we recognize that “OK” is not good enough.

Starting with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) last year, we set out to be a leader in delivering the latest software and were successful in quickly rolling out Jelly Bean for the HTC One.  With the release of Android 4.4 (KitKat), we embarked on a mission to push KitKat to our HTC One customers across the US and Canada within 90 days of Google’s official release of the software.

Additionally, we felt it was important to be as transparent with you as possible, which is why we launched the Software Update page to let everyone know how the process works, and to keep you up-to-date with our progress.  We’re excited by the conversation this has generated in the HTC community.

As we approach the 90-day mark, we are getting closer to delivering KitKat and the finish line is becoming more clear. We are currently in the certification phase across all of our carrier partners in North America and they share our enthusiasm for getting this software in your hands. That said, the software development process does not always follow a linear path and we know today that we will miss our self-imposed target. The good news is that we won’t miss by much as it shouldn’t be more than one to two weeks to complete each of the carrier versions of HTC One.

The challenge we gave our teams, in cooperation with our carrier partners, has taught us a lot that will allow us to improve on our upgrade delivery in the future.  We remain resolved to provide timely updates and to be transparent about the process and status of our efforts.  Support of our customers is a major priority for us and we thank you for your support of HTC!

Jason
Go Seahawks!