A man plays with a HTC Desire smartphone
A man plays with a HTC Desire smartphone at a mobile phone shop in Taipei August 15, 2011. HTC, the world's No. 5 smartphone maker, said on Monday it would triple its China outlets to 2,000 by end of this year from 650 now. The company, one of the largest manufacturers of Google's Android-based devices, is embroiled in an acrimonious patent war with Apple, and is also seeing its rapid growth slow in an increasingly competitive market. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang Reuters/Pichi Chuang

Android 5.1 has steadily been rolled out to HTC One 9 including its developer edition and AT&T variant. This time, T-Mobile has joined the party releasing the update to its users. As with other roll outs, some users may receive access earlier or later depending on their region.

Though the latest software is the Android 5.1.1, the Android 5.1 has just been available to HTC users. The update promises a range of improvements including battery life and pre-loaded Google Wallet app. The firmware also comes with anti-theft protection that can guard against unauthorized resetting of the device. To enable the features, users have to key in the lockscreen security and log in to a Google account.

According to T-Mobile, user should ensure the following if they want to download the software:

· 50% or higher battery life
· Wi-Fi data connection
· Enough memory to accomodate 833 MB

Further, the company announced that the software will be pushed to subscribers between July 27 and August 20. Users only need to follow on-screen steps once they see the OTA notification. For those who have not received the update yet, they can check their devices manually. To check the updates and download the software from the HTC servers is detailed as follows:

1. Go to Home screen then tap on the Apps icon.
2. Choose Settings.
3. Select About.
4. Go to Software updates.
5. Select Check now then following the prompts.

On the other side of the news, Google may be faced with even more challenges amidst the continuous roll out of updates, as new evidence suggest that Android operating systems may be vulnerable to hacks through mere text messages. The information came from researchers at Zimperium zLab and may be one of the worst flaws reported about Android units. Lead researcher Joshua Drake said in his statement to Forbes that carriers and manufacturers have not released the fix yet so users may still be at risk.

“I’ve done a lot of testing on an Ice Cream Sandwich Galaxy Nexus… where the default MMS is the messaging application Messenger. That one does not trigger automatically but if you look at the MMS, it triggers, you don’t have to try to play the media or anything, you just have to look at it,” Drake explained.

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