More details emerge on the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 116 update pause

A little over a week ago, details came to light regarding an issue with the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5’s update status. As we’d noted previously, the Duet 5 has been stuck on ChromeOS 116 for quite some time now, and before the new information showed up, we really had no clue as to why that was happening.

Now that we know the reasoning, it’s messy, but simple: there’s an issue with the USB-C hardware that is conflicting with the update process, causing some users to experience a boot loop that they can’t get out of. While not widespread or happening across the board, the issue was serious enough to warrant a pause in updates until things can be resolved. In a recent update to the Google Issue Tracker, the following was shared for those affected:

We would like to share further updates about this issue. Currently we’re waiting for our vendor to perform failure analysis on the affected component.

As people have noticed, auto-updates for the sibling devices, Duet 5 (homestar) and Duet 3 (wormdingler), were paused in association with this issue. Specifically, Duet 5 was paused at R116 and Duet 3 was paused at R117. This is because R117 contained the firmware update associated with this issue for the Duet 5 and R118 contained the firmware update associated with this issue for Duet 3.

For Duet 5, the majority of users successfully updated to R117 before the issue was identified. Anyone who made it to R117 on Duet 5 stayed there for a while as we worked on the issue but those that made it to R117 have now been cleared to receive R118. R118 has the same firmware for Duet 5 as R117 so it’s safe for Duet 5 users on R117 to update to R118. Those on R116 are still held on R116.

For Duet 3, R118 was never pushed to the stable channel and all Duet 3 devices are being held to R117. It can be noted that there are no actual reports of Duet 3 devices being affected by this issue, but since the machine is very similar to the Duet 5 hardware-wise we’ve been holding the updates in an abundance of caution.

Note that only a very small number of users who get the firmware update are affected by this issue, which is the whole reason that R117 was pushed to so many people on Duet 5 before the problem was identified and also why debugging has been so difficult. Despite only affecting a very small number of users, we have still been holding updates for this because we don’t want any more devices to run into it. While we realize that nobody wants their update held, we believe this is the right choice for users.

via the Google Issue Tracker

From this, we can learn that even though the issue seems to be very small in scope, the ChromeOS team is moving forward with caution as to not brick devices. Staying on ChromeOS 116 may be a little frustrating, but it won’t compromise the usability of your device. A boot loop without a proper fix, on the other hand, very well could.

This explanation also clears up some of the messages and emails we’ve had from a handful of users who are on ChromeOS 117 or 118 with their Duet 5s. As you can see above, in the right scenarios, some of you should be getting ChromeOS 118, but only if you’d previously made it to 117. For now, to keep things clean, the update servers are sitting on ChromeOS 116 until the issue is resolved.

How long that will take is anyone’s guess, but it could be ChromeOS 120 at the earliest, and that would be in January. Right now, that’s the next scheduled update, and as we already know, ChromeOS 119 isn’t going over so well. The ChromeOS team first has to iron out the issues with 119 before clearing up things for the Duet 5, I’d imagine. Hopefully by the early parts of 2024, we’ll see a fix for this unfortunate issue and Duet 5 owners can get back in step with the rest of the Chromebook community as we leave this messy end of 2023 behind.