Some sites today are erroneously spreading word that Nokia has begun a “global rollout” of the Portico Windows Phone OS update for the Lumia 920 and 820. Presumably this includes unlocked phones and even ones on various carriers.

Unfortunately, these sites didn’t verify the information or took liberties with the source.

The foundation of the story is semi-official as it comes from Nokia’s own forum pages where a Community Manager posted, almost verbatim, our quote from Nokia yesterday.

A site called Symbian Tweet then lead the way with an article touting Nokia’s “global rollout” of the 820 and 920 rollout. WMPoweruser followed suit (along with the Verge) with the same headline, even though up to this point no one has been able to get an actual update outside of AT&T, Rogers or T-Mobile.

Truth be told, the original source post doesn’t even mention “global” anywhere.

We contacted Nokia and Microsoft on the matter for clarification, as we had heard nothing about a global rollout kicking off (and be sure, we would have heard about it). As it turns out, Nokia has not started such a system-wide update of Portico, which means you can stop checking your phone today. Certainly, Nokia never even said they were doing a global rollout so the info was just wrong from the beginning.

Nokia’s Communications Manager of North America, Chris Hollis did tell us the following:

“A Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 software update providing performance enhancements for the Nokia Lumia 820 and Nokia Lumia 920, has started rolling out over the air to operators. This currently includes Lumia 920 owners on AT&T and Rogers, Lumia 820 users on AT&T, and Lumia 810 users on T-Mobile. Delivery will continue in a phased manner over the coming weeks and is expected to be complete by the end of February. People will receive a notification on their phone when the update is available for them to download.”

Regarding other, international carriers (and those with unlocked phones or ones from BUILD), your update is still being tested and approved for quality. Once Nokia is satisfied with their stringent internal testing, it will be passed on to Microsoft for distribution. But that process is still happening and is not being executed at the moment.

As to the process of who gets the update when, all we can say is we’ll continue to pass along updates from Nokia as we receive them. At this point though, it won’t be a global anything as Nokia and Microsoft will release the update through carriers as it comes online. 

Due to the vastness of Nokia’s global coverage, we’ll do our best to let you folks know when that ensues. Just be assured Nokia and Microsoft are working promptly and this process should be relatively quick.