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When Verizon’s Droid X received its update to Gingerbread, we hoped it would mean smooth sailing for the rest of the carriers high-end handsets from Motorola on their path to Android 2.3. A Gingerbread “soak test” followed shortly for the Droid 2 Global, but a few weeks later the update has yet to rollout to the general public. So what gives?
According to a report by DroidLife, Verizon hasn’t been all that pleased with the quality of the updates being provided by Motorola. Bugs uncovered in the Android 2.3 upgrade for the Droid X have led the carrier to reject the current round of updates prepped for the Droid family until Motorola can work out the kinks. This includes the Droid 2, Droid X2, and Droid Pro (which had its own flirt with Gingerbread last month). Motorola is apparently hard at work getting the updates up to standard, going so far as to assign new members to the teams working on the Gingerbread builds. Still, there is no telling when their labors will actually result in the final release of Android 2.3 for Moto’s Droid lineup.
[via DroidLife]
Motorola is still at it with buggy software? And I thought they learned a thing or two since the Milestone.
This would be a moot point if they didn’t try to blur everything up. See: Droid 1. Amazing.
That’s the problem though. I still think that after all the Motorola devices on Verizon, and whatever feeble amount of Moto’s that is on the other carriers, OG Droid is the still the best. Photon and Bionic had the chance to reach it, if it only came unlocked.
Its looking like the droid 3 and bionic will have unlocked bootloader.
Totally agree – I have the D1 and would love to stick with Motorola – but I’ve used blur on other people’s phones and it is horrible. Right now, I’m looking at Samsung (or possibly Sony) despite there lack of OS updating (LG has Bing/MS all over it, HTC overheats, has a crappy camera, and has battery issues, Moto has blur – all are no-goes for me)
this is why HTC is awesomeness. I have had 2.3.3 for a couple of weeks now with no problems on my EVO that was released over a year ago. MOTO sucks!!!
The update completely screwed up the GPS on my Droid X (20 + minutes to find location). Verizon recommended doing a factory reset and when all was said and done, all of the issues were fixed.
Sometimes a factory reset fixes all lol its funny how it actually works sometimes. I think they should tell you to do a factory reset anyway once you get a new OS. I mean all the roms do it and it seems they do not have nearly the issues the official updates have.
The only issue with doing the factory reset is spending the time to get everything back up and running, I’ll admit that it was a bit of a pain, but it’s better than dealing with a buggy OS.
Moto appears to be heading down the same fail road they were before the original droid — crappy pentile screens, buggy software, and no real innovation. Such a shame since they hit the OG Droid out of the ballpark.
It’s really a shame. I was seriously considering the Droid 3/Milestone 3, especially after I heard about motorola considering to do something with the bootloader. At least until I saw the pentile screen anyway.
Well I haven’t seen much said so I thought it was just isolated. But my wife took the 2.3 update on her Droid X and the phone turned to complete crap and continues to get worse. Its almost unusable now as the keyboard has gone ape sh!t. I’m thinking about rooting her phone and putting her on something else. I don’t don’t think we will be buying Android from Moto again. HTC so far is my manufacturer of choice though I’m probably going to get a GSII when they drop.
Verizon finally stepped up and replaced my second Droid X with another model after I made a sound case. I had links to forums and proved that there were others with the issue. I also showed them that Moto would not respond to anything that had to do with this issue from anyone. Motorola still refuses to acknowledged that there is an issue with the 3G dropping to 1x. Because of this they have lost me as a customer.
Motorola needs to embrace the Android platform in all its nakedness (vanilla Android). It did wonders for the OG Droid. Motoblur is killing them and they’re too stupid to realize it. Enough Moto..get your sh!t together and not only make customers happy but your reputation will be salvaged. It’s a Win-Win fu%&ers!
Even better load blur but unlock the bootloader. Then whoever wants can easily root and take blur off unlike having to jump through hurdles to root their current locked down phones.
Yeah, I also think Motorola is starting to lose the goodwill of the community. Unlocking the bootloader might not even cut it anymore. If they start making vanilla Android phones, that might actually help them.
I LIKE naked :) ;)
This is not surprising… It’s probably why the Cliq XT never got the 2.1 update either. Motoblur is bloatware no on can benefit from. Do yourself a favor, root your moto and wipe blur completely off. Cyanogen has been able get 2.3.3 and now 2.3.4 working without it.
Because Cyanogen undergoes the same rigorous testing and has full Verizon approval ensuring that it’s bug free, right?
No it doesn’t come without it’s bugs but simply put it’s CynanogenMod. Motorola (a multi-billion dollar corporation) can’t even come up with timely/proper updates along side Verizon (another multi-billion dollar corporation) to the general public. But Cynanogen and his team of devs (which I highly doubt are a multi-billion dollar corporation) can come up with a WHOLE new Android build on the daily..just look up “nightlies” and you’ll see what’s up. They sh!t on every phone maker out there especially Moto.
Motorola does builds nightly too. They just don’t release them to the public on a nightly basis and let the public find the bugs for them. They test. And then they send to the carrier to test. It’s the kind of thing that professionals who have responsibilities to customers and shareholders have to do. If a Cyanogen mod screws up your phone it’s your tough luck. If a Moto build screws up your phone, they’re responsible. Big difference.
Still does not cover the fact that Moto and VZW appear to do a poor job of creating/testing firmware before published.
Define “poor job”. Quality means different things to different people. If you’re an early adopter who wants the newest and is willing to ignore bugs because you expect tomorrow’s release to be better, then by all means go with CM or other third party ROMs. You’re their target consumer.
But guess what? You’re not the only one who owns the phone. You’re type of user isn’t even close to a majority of the user base. The OEM ROMs are aimed for the typical user, not you.
Are they bug free? No, though they do have benchmarks they need to hit before they can release. Are they slower to release? Heck yeah, and for a reason: the test cycles take time. And there are scheduling issues. Just because Moto is ready with a build doesn’t mean VZ is ready to test it. Moto makes a lot of different phones and each one needs to be optimized to release specs. VZ tests a lot of different phones.
I don’t expect you actually care about the reasoning and logistics of it all. Why bother with how the real world works when things happen so much easier in the Land of Your Imagination, but there it is anyway. And so the OEM releases and they’re schedules don’t meet your needs: that only makes them lacking in your eyes. Who besides you cares about your opinion? If you don’t like a product, get a different product.
So, explain why the custom ROM’s (Stable) tend to work better than the OEM ones, and get released faster?
I was 100% satisfied with Froyo on my DX. I was in the soak test and complained about the “not being able to make a phone call without rebooting” issue but no, Matt proclaimed the soak test an “overwhelming success” based on a handful of users testing their phones over a holiday weekend.
Complete failure – and between this and the stupidity with the Xoom/LTE, I wont be buying Motorola products anymore. I actually don’t know if I’ll stick with Android either since I find HTC’s phones ugly and Sense is worse than blur – and Samsung doesn’t support their phones at all.
Samsung most deff supports their phones. After the backlash they got from the american galaxy s line, they have no gone with completlly unlocked boatloarders, and have been handing out source code like mad (it’s the american cariers that have not been handing out the updates).
I would say go with samsung, they make the best products, and are finally realizing that they need to support the dev community.
i mean they just gave the CM team free Galaxy S2’s and said…”go at it”
Going open and letting the community work things out for themselves is exactly the opposite of supporting their product! They’re, in effect, saying, “Here. Plain android. Your problem.” (and don’t need to keep on as much of a platform support staff because the “satisfied” users are doing all the work for free.
Except that the community does a much better job than samsung. It’s like outsourcing, but free. Plus it gets more done faster.
Considering Motorola released a funke-up bad firmware release on the DX2 that has mature hardware and OS to work with, seems no surprise.
Extrapolating from this and the DX2 results, does not seem too certain for a July release of the D3, yet alone an endo of July release for the Bionic.
Somebody has taken Moto’s mojo. Probably was that fat Blur Bastard.
maybe the droid 3 and the bionic were the reason the builds had so many bugs since they moved on to their new flagship phones and left the others to be forgotten
Possible
personally, i hope so….my og droid is really showing its age
Holy $*%#! what is this, an HTC Thunderbolt gripe thread? Seriously, look at all the complaints here and then look at the complaints on a Thunderbolt thread. If you don’t see similarities, you’re really not paying attention. I’m flat out saying this here and now, A LOT OF THIS B.S. HAS TO DO WITH VERIZON ITSELF. Seriously, do some comparisons. You’ll see the same issues are going on with other devices NOT manufactured by Motorola.
Agree my thunderbolt has a ton of issues and the first update they sent out made it worse. If verizon would quit messing with the updates and let the manufacturers handle it and not load their crapware on it there wouldnt be nearly any problems. Look at the root threads once they install custom roms and remove the bloat the issues go away. Coincidence??
I suggest that Android fragmentation to cover different hardware platforms is a root cause. OEMs and carriers do not seem to grasp the problems.
Motorola android phones are a no for me because after the froyo upgrade for the Defy, there were more bugs that slowed the phone, random reboots, sometimes it freezes and I have to remove the battery.
That happened out of the box with the thunderbolt. Then they sent out an update and it got worse lol.
I admittedly haven’t owned any Motorola Android phones, but I’ve played with just about all of them through friends who own them or at stores. Am I the only who thinks the latest version of MotoBlur (found on the Droid X2 and in Gingerbread leaks for other Moto phones) is totally hideous? I actually think the previous MotoBlur found on the original Droid X looks worlds better. The launchers of both versions are laggy, but that’s a completely different gripe. They seriously need some new designers over there. Some of the app styling on the Droid X2 looks like stuff I made in my high school Java class. Check the clashing hideousness of the ugly blue notification bar, lime green battery indicator, and black settings on a white backdrop beneath: http://tinyurl.com/3wth9sb
The original Droid put Motorola back on the map and it was naked Android…So what do they do? Change it up and put their stupid motorblur etc..
If its not broke don’t fix it..They should have sticked with the original Droid plan and stick with naked..
Motorola Mobility downgraded by analysts. Why? In the last year (when they began releasing Blurred crap phones like the Droid X last August) they have lost half of their Android market share.
Sorry, here’s the link on Moto’s downgrade and their losing half of their Android market share;
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Motorola-Mobility-downgraded-by-analysts_id19958
I looove that you morons think Verizon builds roms with the manufacturer. Just someone else you want to point a finger at..
Verizon declined the update for one of two reasons: 1) they genuinely care for the consumer ooorrrrr 2) They know the new Droid 3 is around the corner, so why not “decline buggy builds” until the new phone is released to increase sales.
Im going to go with the second reason. I mean if a team of developers (much smaller, and severely less profits) can release updates to rooted devices, you mean to tell me paid developers with all the tools in the world to unlock every single piece of a device WHICH THEY MADE can’t release updates?
See! Someones feelin me here! (high five)!!
This is it, while they work out the kinks and stuff I’ll be switching over to Nokia N9 when it comes out. Tired of the fragmentation of Android system already. My D2G looks good on paper but it’s still laggy because of all those Blur and crap, even after i freezed many of the apps.
And here is another fine example of DroidX users being overwhelmed with Gingerbread bugs:
https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/52111?start=0&tstart=0
7 pages of people returning their DroidX’s because the phone disconnects from the celluar and 3G service and can’t even place phone calls! I’m one of them!
Motorola and Verizon have completely failed to appropriately support their existing Gingerbread user base. No wonder the updates have been shelved. This is a total and complete failure all the way around.
Honestly, I don’t think this is just a Motorola thing. I had a launch-day Thunderbolt, I tried the Charge, and I’ve owned a Galaxy Tab. I’ve also talked to other Android users on various devices, and ALL of them have their quirks.
I think the real problem is that Android just isn’t as stable as it ought to be. I don’t know if this is due to core OS problems or due to issues with hardware drivers.
However… I have to say that, despite the problems I’m having with my Droid X on Gingerbread, it’s more stable now than it was on FroYo. I’m no longer getting lockups every second time I use Maps, and I’m not getting the random reboots when I plug it in to charge. The upgrade even fixed a bug with Slacker that was causing the volume to double-change when I pressed the button (press the up 1x, volume goes up 2x.)
My Droid X on 2.3 was so freakin slow. KEYBOARD LAG!!!! I complained multiple times to Verizon until FINALLY after 3 replacement phones they gave in and gave me a Droid X2. WAYYY Faster! Got the Droid X2 in the mail about two hours ago. :D
The OG Droid X was fast with 2.2. With 2.3 it nearly broke the phone. So unimpressed. Verizon even connected me with Motorola and they tried blaming Android and wouldn’t do anything. They played dumb when I said Motorola designed blur and F’d up 2.3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These issues are the reason that I created a Facebook page to help us customers voice our displeasure with the way that manufacturers and Carriers treat us customers, all because they want to be different like everyone else. Is there anyone that can name one burned in app that comes from a Carrier or Manufacturer that is good that can’t be downloaded on the Android market?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eliminate-Manufacturer-and-Carrier-customizations-on-Android-Phones/179038308823773?v=wall