After 157 (!) days Asus finally released the firmware update for ZenFone Max Plus (M1), also known as ZB570TL model code. The update is listed in the official BIOS & Firmware page and has a release date of May 23, 2019.

The update is sadly still Android Oreo, so the debates if this update will include the promised Pie or not are now over. Also, this update was promised to fix many heavy bugs that update to Oreo has brought, including battery leaking, loss of mobile signal, device restarts and similar. Read more about the promise in the updates to this post, where Selena_ASUS writes “New update will fix many major bugs, such as signal drop.”

Here’s what the official page is saying this update includes:

ASUS ZenFone Max Plus (M1) Software Image Version: WW-15.02.1904.453 (Android O) For WW SKU only*
Improve Items?
1.Update Google Security patch to 2019/5
2.Improve SD card supports EXFAT NTFS function

The size of the firmware is 1.59 GB, but it’s not clear how big the size of the OTA update is. A user on the forum claims it to be 1.7 GB.

Change log basically doesn’t say anything about the fixes of the problems that were present since the Oreo update in late 2018. There is also no information available when Android 9 Pie update will be available.

Selesa_ASUS, official forum administrator, replies on May 21, 2019 to a question about the update to a user who has “battery,sound,random restarting issue with my phone” with:

The latest Android O update will release in this week.We will improve this problem and also expected to conduct a software update plan in the subsequent system version.

Android O update was released, but apparently it didn’t fix the problems. After the phone owner “eiansiah57” from Malaysia applied this update he writes:

I received the update today but it seems like it doesn’t change anything my phone restarts more frequently and battery draining very fast and it becomes more laggy,is the update released just to update security patch but not improve any bugs??

Another phone owner wrote:

Today we have finally an update but the update didn’t fix the major problems like lag on system ui, blurry camera, and poor battery life.

As of the time of writing there was no replies about what fixes were included. However, from the official change log and this phone user I suspect update version 15.02.1904.453 brings only security patches plus a non-requested feature, but omits all the badly needed fixes.

There is still no info about when the bugs will be fixed. Selena_ASUS writes:

We have no information of next update currently