The majority of qualifying Motorola gadgets won't bite into Google's Ice Cream Sandwich until the second half of 2012.
Motorola finally released an estimated schedule for the Android 4.0 upgrade to be installed on many of its smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately, the news isn't good for those hoping for some tasty ice cream sandwich love this quarter. In fact, only a handful of devices will receive the update in 2Q12 and five devices in the following quarter. Over twenty smartphones and tablets are still stuck in the "evaluation and planning" phase (limbo), and awaiting a projected release date.
As Motorola indicates, upgrades go through four stages: evaluation and planning, development, testing, and the actual release. During the evaluation and planning stage, Motorola evaluates the benefits, technical issues and user experience of an upgrade. "Generally, we are not able to provide release dates in this stage," the company states. "There are also some cases in which we can state that an upgrade will happen but are not able to provide a release date. Please note that some products that enter the Evaluation and Planning phase may not complete the upgrade cycle."
Once the upgrade goes through development and testing, it must be approved by the carrier or local regulators. Typically this is when consumers actually notice that an OTA update is ready to install, but at times there's also a small testing group that will make sure everything is in order before the carrier unleashes the upgrade to the masses (Verizon, for example, does this). Otherwise, users can simply go into the Settings menu to see if a manual update is possible.
With that out of the way, here's Motorola's schedule thus far here in the States:
Q1 2012
Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi only
Q2 2012
Motorola Xoom Family Edition
Q3 2012
Atrix 2
Atrix 4G MB860
Photon 4G
Motorola Xyboard 8.2
Motorola Xyboard 10.1
Undetermined (meaning it's too early to project a timeframe)
Admiral
Droid 3
Droid 4
Droid Bionic
Droid Razr
Droid Razr Maxx
Droid X2
Droid Xyboard 8.2
Droid Xyboard 10.1
Electrify
Milestone 3
Milestone X2
Motorola Pro+
Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi + 3G MZ600
Motorola also provides a schedule for Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Mexico which can be viewed here.
"We know how excited you’ve been about getting the next stage of Ice Cream Sandwich updates for your Motorola devices," the company said in a blog. "Our engineers and designers are combing through the code and preparing it for you. We are pleased to provide more details to the ICS upgrades."
So far it seems that a majority of Motorola devices won't bite into Google's ice cream sandwich until later this year. Bummer, we know (sigh).
I really need to learn to wait two months, now its $550.
My upgrade is up in April... and for me this means I just won't buy a Motorola phone, period.
I'm waiting for a phone the size of the Droid Galaxy Note, the battery of the Droid Razr Maxx and really good camera quality, with ICS out of the box, AND on Verizon. 4G is a given.
Until then, I'll wait.
Heck I am becoming so sick and tired of the android crap that goes on between the device manufacturers and carriers that I may just hold out for the next version of Windows phone and jump ship.
Carriers like these, and stupid phone manufacturers, are the ones giving Android a bad fragmentation rep. in it's vanilla form Android is a perfect OS. I still prefer it to some closed alternatives, because it offers so much customization.
Even funnier is how only a few days after they have worked so hard to cripple their phones, some dev dude working alone can crack it and release it into the wild in just a few days. Instead of investing all that money into building roadblocks, they should invest it in revamping their hardware line and start listening to the customers' feedback. Is it that hard to slap a BIG battery together with a top-of -the-line screen, 2 GB RAM and release it in our hands?
They are the same hardware, just different carriers.
Different carrier = different bloatware.
Maybe by then they'll have figured out why YouTube constantly locks up on the d*mn thing.
I am surprised to see the Atrix on this list. And I've never had an issue with YouTube on my Atrix.
Honeycomb was tablet exclusive. I guess ICS will be Nexus exclusive at this rate.
Lucky for you. The thing locks up 50% of the time for me on youtube. You can't do anything but remove the battery to restart the phone. It really sucks having an big Otterbox case on my phone too. On the bright side, i can pull the whole thing apart and reassemble in the dark now lol.