Lumia Cyan not yet available for my phone?

Question

According to the Nokia Software Update Tracker, the Lumia Cyan update should now be available for my phone model, region, and carrier. It has been available, according to that site, at least since yesterday. However, despite multiple checks for updates over the past few days, my phone is still reporting no update is available.

I thought this might be a problem caused by the Developer Preview I'd installed to get an early-release update to Windows Phone 8.1 on my phone. However, my parents have the same phone model and carrier (and do not have Developer Preview) and their phones also say no update is available.

Is there something wrong with our phones, or is such a delay to be expected even when availability is announced (again, specifically for our phone model, carrier, and region) on Nokia's site? Is there another way to get a more accurate estimate of when we should expect the update to be available for our phones?

Answer 1

There may indeed be some lag between the time an update's availability is announced, and the time it's actually made available to your particular phone. Even when it's confirmed available on the manufacturer's website (in Nokia's case, it's listed down to the country and cell carrier), you may still need to wait awhile. For my particular case, my parents didn't get their update until about a day after Nokia's site said it should be available.

Also bear in mind there may be special considerations for Developer Preview users. In the case of Windows Phone 8.1, updates were withheld due to some issues with applying them to phones which had the Developer Preview installed.

To work around this, you will need to restore your phone to a fully-supported OS. This is not as simple as turning off the Developer Preview option, un-installing the Preview for Developers app, or even doing a Factory Reset. The process probably varies by manufacturer, and may require that you take your phone into a service center. No matter how it is done, be aware that it will erase all personal data and customizations from the phone, and it will remove all of your installed apps. Make sure you have good backups of any data you want to keep. After the process is complete, you should be able to re-download and re-install any apps which are still available in the Store. (Apps which have been pulled from the Store may not be re-installed.)

Once your phone is restored to a fully-supported OS, you should be able to install the 8.1 update. In my particular case, I was able to download the Nokia Software Recovery Tool and do the restoration myself. The Tool also installed the latest firmware directly, which included the Cyan update and Windows Phone 8.1, so I didn't need to do another update run to get the latest OS.

Answer 2

I had the same problem about one year and a half ago: I was continuously checking for update to WP 7.8 on my Lumia 710. After some months that the update was made available to all platforms and phone brands, I still wasn't able to upgrade my phone. The only working solution was to force my phone to upgrade, using SevenEighter.

I think that a similar tool could exist also for upgrading to 8.1. Disclaimer: these tools usually don't guarantee that the upgrade will be safely successful.