Motorola has a certifiable hit with its Droid phone, but it missed with a promised upgrade. Seems a promise was made that proved difficult to keep, and Droid owners will have to wait a few more days to get the 2.1 OS upgrade. Enterprise Mobile Today gets the story.
There are a few red faces at Motorola today as the company has had to retract its previously reported release of Android 2.1 for the popular Droid phone. The company made a proclamation on Facebook that version 2.1 would come this week, but that plan is on hold for now.
Droid shipped with the Android 2.0 operating system, and has since had an upgrade to 2.0.1. The upgrade to 2.1 — which is already available on the Google Nexus One phone — offers a few big improvements and a lot of little fixes under the hood. Not surprisingly, the update has been eagerly anticipated by the Droid community.
However, after the Facebook posting, an unfortunate Motorola (NYSE: MOT) forums manager named Matt had to inform Droid users that “The details posted here and on the Support site were prematurely released for public view.”
Android 2.1, codenamed “Éclair,” offers enhancements like animated wallpapers; support for HTML5 video, support for voice recognition and audio triggers, and APIs that recognize and adjust to changes in wireless signal strength. It also includes new APIs for WebKit relating to Web storage databases and geolocation, and improved browser settings, such as better video handling.