I have a Philips 50pfl5604 that I purchased last spring. It is still android 9 and says no updates are available. Slow as !!!! My sister and B.I.L. each have a MeCool with android 11 and the difference is amazing. My question is can I force an android update with a thumb drive or connect a box like they have to my TV? I'm feeling stuck in the dark ages.
Yeah i agreed i rather get big regular tv and just use the new fire stick 4k or the nvidia shield to make it smart , they are snapping as , you know what i mean , i hate smart tv cause they want to push a bunch of ads so i keep my tv offline
You can get an Android Box or Stick and use it and forget about the "smart TV".
Keep in mind 99% of Android TV's don't get a single update. Box & Stick get updates not TV's. And there's little to no difference between Android 9, 10 & 11. 12 may have a big overhaul.
It might be your TV's CPU and RAM are not good enough, which is very common. TV's come with low end chipset and 1 or max 2GB RAM. Android 11 especially takes more storage and runs worse on old hardware while giving you nothing new in return.
If you want to improve experience try disabling the bloatware apps which came pre installed, stop any background app. It'll work better but don't expect good games to run smoothly.
And no. You can't force update it.
Nothing is wrong with Android 9, it works extremely well for streaming, you not missing out because you don't have Android 11 on your TV. Even have an Android 7 STB & Android 7 Stick device that both run extremely well. Just go over to the Nvidia ShieldTV subreddit and look at all the complaints from users letting there system upgrade from AndroidTV 9 to AndroidTV 11.
Software Development takes time & money and most manufacturers aren't willing to invest in making the software the best it can be; kudos to Nvidia for trying though.
The problem is Philips like most TV manufacturers paired just the minimum required CPU+Ram+Storage (hardware) and didn't invest enough resources to optimize the software to the hardware. So, Yes - adding an external AndroidTV device is the recommended course of action.