By Motorola’s sending out a stern warning saying that anyone on a known, unofficial build of Android 2.2 for the Droid X will not be upgraded to the official upgrade set to come out early September. Motorola’s Matt states that you can revert back to the official Android 2.1 build if you want (though I’m not familiar with the device so I don’t know if that’s possible) to be able to receive the official upgrade soon. If you only deal with custom ROMs anyway then the warning doesn’t apply to you, but I know there are a lot of you out there that like to coast on unofficial builds until the official one begins rolling out. For you guys, you should probably be researching now on how to revert back to the Droid X’s stock Eclair build as “early September” officially begins tomorrow and expires on the 15th.
[Motorola via Droid-Life]
I hope this is just a case of Moto protecting their liability by upgrading only from a “known” state. Some of their public statements lately sound awfully controlling. The last thing I want to see is an Apple floating in my Android pool.
Saying “Early Sept” expires Sep 15th is misleading and somewhat irresponsible unless a set date has been communicated. If all that was communicated was “early Sept”, you want to read that as “NOW, because it could change at ant time”.
It’s not misleading: Early September is considered all of September 1st through all of September 14th, technically. It’s earlier than September 15th through September 30th. Of course I’m not saying they’ll hold up to their word, but that’s something you should take up with Motorola if “early September” comes and goes without an update.
It’s about time
And this is a problem why? We can just sbf, factory restore, and then install the update. No big deal for us. We lose a few settings but that is what nandroid is for. We had clockwork a day or two before 2.2 leaked. Titanium backup and nandroid is all we need…
if your on a baked build now, why wouldn’t you just flash the OTA when it comes out, it will be available to do so if you look around the forums for maybe a minute or two… sometimes you guys worry too much.
This is pretty good news because f#$% you Motorola…… again. Suck our sbf. I like my Droid X, but you aren’t gonna be able to keep my business with just hardware forever… you’ll be caught eventually. Maybe now would be a good time to stop being a complete jerk to your customers? Just a though.
Just realized my wording got a little muddy. Basically my previous post was me ranting at Motorola for being jerks. I was trying to make the point that their hardware is probably the best when you look at all-around performance, durability, etc etc etc etc (at least for Verizon), but it won’t be that way forever.
.
If HTC or Samsung had the battery life, radio performance and durability of Motorola (which they probably will in the future… I hope…) I would easily choose them based on their attitudes towards customers and OS openness.
I am tired of this being touted as important news and made to sound worse than it is. Please, you’re scaring the noobs. It is just as easy to go back to 2.1 as it was to go to 2.2 in the first place. Besides, odds are pretty good that those who upgraded will end up getting the official 2.2 from the same groups who had the leak, before the OTA is finished rolling out.
I think all this means is that the update will be a patch, not a full installation. If you’re not on eclair, you wont get the OTA. Seem reasonable enough to me.
–D.
Just going to flash the OTA update when it gets posted on one of the thousands of Android sites.
If thats possible :P
First off, I am not a fan of Rooting any of my devices. However, If you are one that does prefer to root, you should have the freedom to do so at your cost. I do see Motorola’s stand on this for warranty purposes and to cut back on unnessary units being returned due to consumer fault. i do feel however that this is not good PR on Motorolas part and could see customer satisfaction go up tremendously if they would follow the example that HTC has set. I personally have had great Customer service from both Motorola and HTC but think that because of issues like this HTC will have the edge in the long run. By the way, I am a currentl DX owner and do like the phone however I would prefer to be back on an HTC device.
@MG, what about the bad PR that comes with OTAs “bricking” devices because the end user is running unauthorized SW? Nobody blames the consumer when that happens, even though it’s entirely their own fault. Not to mention that they then demand warranty replacement (read, fraud) because their device is broken. And who eats that cost?
Motorola is starting to sound like apple. After the last update for the original Droid, I heard people saying they can’t use certian roms on their rooted phones. Maybe a glitch, but if Motorola is trying to stop people from rooting their phones it’s an uphill battle and they deserve all the ugly comments.
@MG
If you are not a fan of rooting, what exactly would make you “rather” be on an htc device?
@ ROM the Spaceknight I would consider “Early” september to be the 1st – 10th. Are you insinuating that the 16th Qualifies as “Early” as well?
Why people think Moto should support such things is beyond me. Get a clue to the real world. I know HTC did it but look at all the EVO’s that were screwed up by this. Just revert back and do the official upgrade.
Look, you guys can whine about Motorola’s stance on rooting/flashing custom ROMs all you want, but no matter what you do, it’s not going to change the fact the people who install custom ROMs are niche market that no phone manufacturer cares much about and the cell carriers actively dislike. The fact that Samsung phones aren’t locked down probably speaks more toward them not being willing to expend the effort to do so than any appreciation for the custom ROM community. The minute they think it would be a worthwhile investment, they’ll do it.
You guys get worked up over nothing. This guy is not an official spokesperson for Motorola. He read a press release this morning and is sensationalizing it in a blog post to get the headlines. He has no idea what Motorola considers “Early September” to be, nor does it matter if he did b/c companies rarely meet their deadlines. He has never even rooted a phone before. No news here, keep moving…
@Brian B – I don’t think you read this column often. Quentyn does a good job of finding interesting articles, reporting on them and adding his own, unique spin (much like any decent blogger). However, it’s a simple matter to find the original article and read through it. In this case, you will find there isn’t any “sensationalizing” going on (from Quentyn). Further, the Motorola employee (Matt) on the original post is doing more to emphasize potential issue’s (what some may call sensationalizing) than Quentyn has in this column.
Not that Quentyn isn’t sensational…I’m sure he is.
(Quentyn PhanBoy, signing off!)
#18 +1
@Quentyn Phan Boy: You are correct. First time reader – I found this article via Google.
I get sick of reading so many blogs where the author just rehashes a rumor and puts a sensational headline on it to get listed on Google. Hell, I had a friend who was hired by TechRepbulic.com to write for them. She would send me her articles to review before publishing them b/c she literally knew NOTHING about technology. When I read this article and he said, “though I’m not familiar with the device so I don’t know if that’s possible” I thought, “Geez, here is another guy writing about something he has never even used before!”
I apologize. :-)
@Nlsme….Rooting has nothing to do with me in regards to Motorola or HTC. I simply prefer HTC over Motorola primarily because of the physical design of their devices. Other than that both Motorola and HTC both have excellent devices and in my opinion excellent build quality. Both have their positives and negatives. I prefer a vanilla device and can do without blur or sense due to the fact that everything blur and sense have I can find and have found on the market to do away with these overlay UI’s. This may sound strange why I prefer one device over the other but I feel that both Motorola and HTC are excellent devices and are so close to each other in terms of quality and features offered that it simply boils down to the physical design of the phone at this point which I feel HTC has a slicker and more comfortable device for my preference at this point in the game. That being said, I do have a Droid X which I do like and chose the DX over the Droid Incredible due to the larger screen although I do not prefer the physical design of the phone itself with it being so square and the less than desirable physical navigation buttons but this was my two choices at time of purchase and I DID want to try a Motorola device otherwise I would not truly know which device I preferred. As for rooting, to each their own, I just don’t want to risk throwing several hundred dollars down the drain when I am perfectly happy with what I have with what Android has to offer without rooting. Having said that, I have an decommisioned HTC Droid Eris that I may just try to root to see what all the buzz is about. After all, it’s got no known updates coming its way.
@uprooted….You’ve got a point. The manufacture should at no point be reliable for the cost of a device that has been altered to do something other than what it was designed to do. I don’t think that custom roms, rooting, whatever you want to call it should be blocked but I do think that the manufacturer has the right to somehow track any altering of the device for warranty purposes. I’m sure they can develop a way of doing this. If the device is sent in under a warranty claim and the device is proven to have been running a custom rom not approved by the manufacturer then the manufacturer should have every right to charge the customer full retail for the device. To answer your question, “Who eats the cost?”, that would be the manufacturer up front but in the long run it is going to be you and I, the consumer.
By the way, I am not posting any of this to say I am right or wrong or the manufacture or anybody else is right or wrong, I am simply stating my opinions to strike conversation amongst the Android Community. After all, the Manufactures and Carriers do read these posts.
@pimpstrong , no I’m saying that “early” is by definition a relative term can cannot be quantified the way it’s being done in the article. By doing so, it gives readers the mistaken impression that there is a firm deadline that exist noplace but in the author’s mind. If the cutoff happened, say, Sept 7th, people who hadn’t changed over will blame Moto for blindsiding them and cutting it off early, not the author for pulling a deadline out of thin air or themselves for foolishly believing it.
Well, I ran the 2.2 leak for a while and it had some major show stopper bugs. It couldn’t decide how the SD card was to be mounted and if I had it in USB Charging mode only .. it would advertise itself to have the SD card mounted in both Linux and Mac OS X and then it wouldn’t unmount correctly .. lost a bit of data with that one.
Maybe bugs like the mounting/unmounting of the SD card spooked the hell out of Motorola and THAT is why they were so heavy handed?
MG I sure hope they do read these post…and on doing so start making skinless phones sometimes. Seems like it would make sense for them to make some skinless phones….like the option to get a phone with skin or without
Finally 2.2 FROYO update for Droid X.
I have been waiting a long time for this ,,,it seems.!!
Sorry folks. X 2.2 update pushed out probably 2 more weeks due to some noticeable glitches in testing.
I am a noob that Is waiting for the OFFICIAL 2.2 update. I think it really sucks that Droid, and Droid 2 has 2.2 and Droid X is STILL waiting. I’m not happy with Early September, IT IS ALREADY early September.Give us a FIRM Date!!!!
my answer to motorola and verizon is if you don’t upgrade my
phone they can stick it–i will disconnect and they loose my account an i go back a get an iphone 4 like i was going to do originally–previousely had a 3gs–i will not pay the penalties or any other billed costs –i will sell the phone to someone else. My credit is bullet proof – so they can do what they want—so who really loses? go ahead and punish me.
obw–i cant wait for my droid x to upgrade to 4g like the verizon salesman promised–they are full of it.