Nokia Lumia Black software update roll out almost complete

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The roll out of Nokia's Lumia Black software is now largely complete, with the update available for nearly all applicable device and country variants. The most recent set of releases have been for the mid-tier Lumia 620 and 720. For these devices, the update is notable for adding Nokia's "double tap to wake-up" feature to the touch module of the main Settings app.

A few notable exceptions do update availability remain. The T-Mobile exclusive Lumia 810 will not be receiving the update at all, due to a lack of operator support, and a small number of country and operator variants of the Lumia 620 are also waiting for operator approval for the update to be released. There are also a number of one-off exceptions where specific operator variants are awaiting approval for release (e.g. Vodafone UK Lumia 820 and T-Mobile US Lumia 521).

The Lumia Black software update, which ships on top of the Windows Phone 8 Update 3 (GDR3) software update, includes enhancements for camera performance, changes to a number of system settings, and enablers for a number of new Nokia apps.

Because of screen hardware limitations, the Lumia 520, 525, and 625 do not support Glance Screen. In addition, Nokia Beamer, promoted as part of the Lumia Black update, requires 1GB or more of RAM to run. It is therefore not available for the Lumia 520, 620, 625, and 720. We've summarised this information in the grid below:

Lumia Black matrix

More information on the new features and updates is available in our comprehensive guide to what's new in the Windows Phone Update 3 and Lumia Black software updates.

For more information on the exact availability for your Lumia device, visit this Nokia page, which lists availability information for each device variant. 

As we have previously noted:

The list is divided into countries and sub divided into device and operator variants. The country variant is the generic (SIM-free) product for the country in question (i.e. devices without operator lock and/or branding). Each variant will show one of three status messages: "available", which means the update is ready for download, "coming soon", which means the update has been approved and will shortly become available, and "waiting for approval", which means the update is undergoing check with Nokia and/or operators.

Once the update is available for your device, you will be automatically notified that the update is ready to download and install. This notification process relies on the device carrying out a weekly-or-so check for new updates. You can manually force an update check from Settings -> Phone update.

The installation process will take between 20 and 45 minutes and will include reboots. The process also requires a certain amount of free space in the internal memory, which may mean you need to remove some apps and or files. If enough space is not available the install may fail with an error message (e.g. "cannot open update"). After installation, you may find that you actually gain free space overall, since any previously orphaned files created under Amber are found and deleted.