Droid 2 Spotted in the Wild Again; Now Running Android 2.2, Apparently

While we’ve seen shots of the device running Android 2.1 with Motorola’s custom skin on it before, this is the first we’ve ever heard of the Motorola Droid 2 (or any Motorola device) running it on top of Android 2.2. Droid-Life‘s tipsters discovered that tidbit when he was somehow able to sit down with the device this past weekend.

The skin is the same that we’ve seen on the Droid X (that Motorola conveniently isn’t keen on calling MOTOBLUR) with the one exception being it has 5 homescreen windows opposed to the Droid X’s 7. This story gets even more interesting as each leak comes to light. On the one hand, it was running their custom skin on top of Android 2.1. Later, we learned it was just a placeholder for vanilla FroYo. Now, it’s running Android 2.2 with the custom skin. Next thing you know, we’ll probably see this thing spotted with Android 3.0 if it keeps up like this! (Please do not take that last bit seriously.)

On a slightly related note, this gets us somewhat excited knowing FroYo could be just about ready to launch on the Motorola Droid X as it’s running nearly the same software.

21 Comments

The skin still sucks, not matter what you call it. I hope 3.0 kills off this dumb vendor skin crap.

Agreed Steve, same reason I won’t consider a Samsung phone until they stop ruining the UI experience with their “customizations” and “enhancements”.

just use an ordinary launcher-replacement! The appmarket is full of the.. I dont like the shekl of my dell streak, so i replaced it with a new one.

I’ve never had any luck with the replacement home screens. Too buggy to be useful for me.

I actually like the Motoblur news widge for the X. Weather widget looks like crap though.

I agree with all. ADW.Launcher is the best home screen replacement in my opinion. But that just addresses the home screen issue, not the gay colors Samsung uses in their skin. Vendors just need the basics to get everything running, then LEAVE IT ALONE. Leave customization to the consumer. Turn focus/resources to hardware features and build quality.

Personally, I’m liking Moto’s customizations, not all of which are Blur related. You can simply turn off the blur widgets, and I didn’t have to create a Blur account when I started the phone.

I’ve also noticed a couple of hidden features. There’s now an audio effects setting in the sound settings. You can add some EQ to media playback with that. It also includes a file manager. Finally, there’s no need to download a third-party file manager for basic file operations.

I also like the new text selection tool. It’s similar to the way the iPhone works, where you hold your finger on the text and get the magnifying glass. It only works in input boxes, though – so no copying text from a web page and pasting it in to an e-mail.

I still haven’t figured out what the red bullseye when you enter a text field is all about, though. Is that just a way of letting the user know where the carat is?

Personally, this is not at all surprising, Motorola kind-of needs to kill the “blur/motoblur” named-ui off because it’s so un-popular. So they market their phone as having android, “without *blur”, but what they mean is “with the new motorola custom UI” and not “stock android”, we just can’t call it “motoblur” anymore, so we’re only gonna call it “android 2.2”. For some reason, all the manufacturers seem to be afraid to release stock android, despite the fact that the only custom UI anybody seems to say anything good about is HTC’s sense. Despite this, it seems like the handset vendors figure, “well, if we can just get our customers used to this crap, eventually they’re gonna prefer it over our competitors UI”.

Personally, I want an epic 4g, except with stock froyo, and on Verizon or AT&T instead of Sprint, but I’ll probably end up settling for a Droid 2 with “don’t call it blur” 2.2 on Verizon.

The only thing I don’t like about ADW is that you have to swipe up to get to the launcher bar. Just my personal pet peave. The reason I am still using Launcherpro

Any VZdubs insiders stalk these forums like the rest of us Phandroids?? Would there be any hope for a DInc owner looking to “trade in” for a droid 2? Don’t take this the wrong way, DInc soldiers of the Android army. I love Sense and have had nothing but a mind-blowingly fast and smooth experience with the DInc, but I think froyo would be awfully sweet with a little hardware keyboard to top it off.

I don’t care what skin it has. What I care about is that it is truly Froyo 2.2 if you look up top it says 2.1.14 blah blah which doesn’t really make sense. Most importantly will it have a locked boatloader like the Droid x. Thats what I care about!

Please ignore the first half of my comment. But I want to know about the Bootloader?

all coming moto devices are bootlocked
no custom rom here so you become a hostage of moto
including bug fixes and phone support
even if devices look attractive, it’s far away from android’s openness
if you want a locked device, better go to apple, at least you get decent software
if you like android’s openness, stay away from moto
… IMHO …