Hasselblad X2D II Firmware 1.2.7.16 is Available

Hasselblad quietly published firmware version 1.2.7.16 for the X2D II 100C to their CDN yesterday. There's no press release, no newsletter, no email, no post on their own news page that I can find. I only noticed because Phocus 2 Mobile threw up an update prompt when I connected the camera.

If you own an X2D II and want the firmware, the direct download is below, along with what little Hasselblad has told us about it.

Key finding: Hasselblad released X2D II 100C firmware 1.2.7.16 on 2026-04-13. The official release notes say only "improved stability and overall user experience" with no specific fixes listed. Downgrade is not supported after installation. Direct download is a 363 MB .cim file on Hasselblad's CDN. No detail on what changed means you may only discover specific improvements by comparing behaviour against 1.2.7.11, the previous public release.

Where to download the firmware

The firmware is at https://cdn.hasselblad.com/firmware/X2D_II_100C_Firmware/1.2.7.16/X2DII_100C_v1_2_7_16.cim (363 MB). You should be able to click that link and save the file directly.

It's also available through Phocus 2 Mobile (which is how I noticed it), and presumably through the desktop Phocus firmware flow, though I haven't verified the latter for this release yet.

What Hasselblad says about the update

Verbatim from the release notes bundled with the file:

What's New - Improved stability and overall user experience.

Notes - Downgrade is not supported after the update. - "Update is completed!" will be shown on the touch display once the update is successful.

That's it. No list of resolved issues, no ticket numbers, no references to specific bugs or features, no mention of any of the behaviour that's been widely discussed by X2D II owners in forums and on Reddit. This pattern is consistent with prior X2D II firmware drops.

What comparing 1.2.7.11 and 1.2.7.16 reveals

I pulled both versions side by side. The .cim container's metadata is readable. The rest isn't.

Two things stand out.

1.2.7.11 was built on 2025-11-18 and 1.2.7.16 was built on 2026-03-26. Four months and eight days between them, with five sub-revisions elapsed on the internal 10.00.06.xx versioning scheme. Hasselblad iterated the platform internally across 1.2.7.12, 1.2.7.13, 1.2.7.14 and 1.2.7.15, none of which reached public release. What ships publicly is a subset of what's been tested internally, which is what you'd expect from any cautious firmware shop but worth knowing.

The payload past the header is encrypted. Entropy measured on both files is 8.000 out of 8.000, the theoretical maximum. Across the full 346 MB payload, 99.61% of bytes differ in every 4 MB chunk. Compression alone would leave some unchanged common blocks; uniform per-chunk difference at near-100% is the signature of encryption with a different initialisation vector per build. You can't diff the two firmware files to work out what changed. Nobody can. That's by design.

The 363 MB payload includes the full camera OS image rather than a differential patch, which is why downgrade isn't supported once installed: the old image isn't preserved anywhere. The small size reduction (-333 KB) could be dead code removal, asset trimming, or just a slightly better compression ratio on the underlying bundle. Without the plaintext, there's no way to attribute it.

So when I say the release notes are sparse: that's literally all the information anyone outside Hasselblad is going to get from this release. The file won't tell us more.

How to install

The standard X2D II firmware flow hasn't changed. Copy the .cim file to a freshly formatted CFexpress card, put it in the camera, and run Menu → General Settings → Firmware → Update. The camera reads the file off the card and handles the rest. You'll see the "Update is completed!" message on the touch display when it's done.

If you haven't updated X2D II firmware before, and you're nervous about bricking the camera, Phocus 2 Mobile's in-app update flow is the gentler option. It downloads the file itself, verifies it, and pushes it over the connection.

Either way: make sure the battery is fully charged first, don't interrupt the update, and don't expect to downgrade if you don't like what you get.

If you notice what changed, let me know

The lack of detail in the release notes is a recurring theme with Hasselblad firmware, and I've written about the undocumented control and customisation quirks this camera already ships with. Without a change log, owners end up reverse-engineering what actually changed from their own observations.

If you install 1.2.7.16 and notice something behaving differently (metering, autofocus, continuous shooting, the touch display, file naming, anything), feel free to comment below or email me. I'll compile observations and update this post if a clearer picture emerges. The Phocus 4.x guide documents current camera behaviour against Phocus 4.1.2, so noticeable firmware changes would ripple into the next revision of that too.

In the meantime: the firmware is live, the download link works, and the release notes are exactly as sparse as you'd expect.