Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus - forcing an update? I bought my Galaxy Nexus in New Zealand - via parallel importing. I believe it came from Russia, given my manual was in Russian(!).  But it works perfectly and is genuine.

A colleague there bought one from the same source the next day, and his arrived a day after mine.

I then moved to Canada, and got a Rogers sim card.  All good.

However, my ex-colleague got a 4.0.4 upgrade about 8 weeks before myself.  I tried forcing an update, but no luck.

Then last week, I finally got 4.0.4, and about the same day, my old colleague emailed to say he got an OTA update to 4.1.

What gives? Is it a geo-fenced roll-out? How can I force an update? (I've  gone to system updates to check for an update, but no luck).  Or would I have to root and do it manually? I'd prefer not to if there's a simple way to force an update...

Baseband I9250XXLA2, Build IMM76K.I9250XWLD2
There are many variations of the Galaxy Nexus. Most likely, your phone is yakjuxw, which gets the updates from Samsung. The other phone is either yakju or takju, which use Google's own updates, which are released quicker.

The versions are interchangeable, if you don't account for international customizations or possible carrier modifications. For example, see my answer here on how to change the yakjuxw firmware to takju Jelly Bean, which can be then officially upgraded to 4.1.1 via OTA.