Anyone who has a Motorola smartphone running Android will be pleased to hear that the company has release a schedule of updates – but some handsets are left out in the cold, with Devour owners in particular getting short shrift.
First, the good news: Android 2.2 continues its phased rollout onto the Motorola Droid across the US, while its successor the Motorola Droid X has an upgrade to Android 2.2 planned for “late summer.”
Although a leaked ROM for Android 2.2 on the Droid X has made an appearance on the web, Motorola looks to be gently encouraging users to wait for the official release – by sending cease and desist letters threatening legal action against any sites found to be hosting the file. Still, “late summer” isn’t too long to wait for the official build.
Sadly, that’s where the good upgrade news stops – if you’re a Droid or Droid X owner, you’ve either already got or will shortly be getting Android 2.2, which brings Adobe Flash support and significantly improved performance to handsets based around Google’s mobile platform.
Now on to the not-quite-so-good-but-not-bad-either news: owners of the Motorola Backflip, Cliq, or Cliq XT will be getting upgraded in Q3 or early Q4 – but certainly by the end of the year. What stops this from being plain-old good news, however, is that these handsets will only be bumped to Android 2.1 – which is missing both the performance enhancements and the support for Adobe Flash that Android 2.2 brings to the platform.
Okay, so it’s still an upgrade – and the possibility of Android 2.2 appearing some time in the future isn’t completely ruled out – but it’s not the upgrade that many owners were hoping for.
Which leaves us with the Motorola Devour users, who can only look on in jealous rage as the rest of Motorola’s handsets get upgraded to at least Android 2.1 while their precious smartphones are left to languish on the severely outdated Android 1.6 – with Motorola officially stating that the Devour “will not have a software upgrade to Android 2.1,” ever.
For non-US users, the state of upgrades in their particular country can be found on the official Motorola support page – and there’s some interesting anomalies, such as the European version of the Backflip not scheduled to receive an upgrade, despite the US version getting Android 2.1 before the end of the year.
