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It has been quite a while since we heard anything about the Gingerbread update for the original Motorola Droid 2 (not Global), but it looks like VZW and Moto finally finished it up and it has received the stamp of approval, as it's rolling out in OTA fashion as I type this.
Hey, Droid 2 owners! Remember in the not so distant past when the Droid X received a workaround that allowed it to get its own build of CyanogenMod 7? Yeah, you knew it was only a matter of time before Team Douche hooked you up, too - and now the wait is over.
TeamBlackHat has publicly released a leaked official Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) software update build for the Motorola DROID 2. To install the update, you must have the DROID 2 Bootstrapper by Koush. Instructions and download links below:
So look, Verizon's price for the Motorola Droid 2 Global is nice (or at least pretty decent for a phone loaded with a 1.2GHz processor and dual GSM/CDMA radios), but it can't stand up to the deals you and I both know Wirefly's been cooking up. Well now the Internet's largest authorized retailer of cell phones has come out and made it official - it's selling both the white and the regular versions of the phone for just $99.99 with a new two-year contract. As for add-a-line plans, you'll be coughing up $129.99 , while existing Verizon customers looking to upgrade will be handing over $149.99. However, there are no taxes, mail-in-rebates, or shipping fees on any of the deals, meaning that all three prices are still lower than Big Red's lowest ($199 on a new two-year contract). The party starts at the source links.
Verizon has finally announced the Motorola Droid 2 Global on the Verizon Facebook page. It may seem a bit backwards since the pre-order has been going on for a while - but now it's officially official. The D2G will be priced at $199.99 with a new two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate - which means you'll be paying $299.99 upfront.
Wow... that's the only word I have to describe what Amazon Wireless pulled this morning. Amazon and Wirefly oftentimes offer killer deals compared to the carriers (like yesterday's $50 Droid Pro Wirefly deal), but this one is just ridiculous. All of the Droid phones, including the newly released Droid Pro, are exactly 1 penny over at Amazon Wireless for new Verizon customers:
Verizon's really steamrolling along with the Android train, aren't they? In addition to last night's official announcement of the Samsung Continuum, the Motorola Droid Pro and Droid 2 Global are now both up for pre-order. Just as we'd heard, the D2G looks to be $200 after rebates, while the DP, as announced yesterday, will clock in at $180 (both with a new contract).
The Motorola Droid 2 Global is really turning out to be the worst-kept secret since the Bay of Pigs invasion, isn't it? We've been hearing inklings of it since mid-September, including rumors that the CPU would be clocked at 1.2 GHz.
Word on the street is that Droid 2 users are now receiving/pulling a minor update. The official Verizon document on the update reveals a number of improvements:
Android smartphones you can buy for as little as a penny on a new two-year contract tend to be few and far in between, but it looks like Amazon's looking to change that. The movement started with them selling all US versions of Samsung's Galaxy S phones (save for Sprint's Epic 4G) for $0.01 on contract a few weeks back, and now they're taking the same approach with the Motorola Droid 2. Not a bad deal at all, especially now that the device has seen its first AOSP ROM. Hit up the source link to grab one of these beasties for yourself.
The Motorola Droid 2 may ship with a pesky eFuse bootloader which has been designed specifically to prevent rooting of the phone, but little things like that have never held back the truly talented and passionate (and nerdy). The FRF91 Vanilla Android ROM - the Droid 2's first AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROM - has just made an appearance on DroidForums.
Having one device leaked is so last fiscal year, man. Verizon is hip to the new trend of leaking out details of all of your devices and giving people a heads-up to not buy phones that are out right now since they're just gonna get replaced anyway.
Not many phones come at the on-contract price of $249, save for the Epic 4G, and now, the latest addition to the Droid family - the R2-D2 edition of the Droid 2. At $249 it's not exactly cheap, but then again, that buys you not just the Star Wars-themed phone itself, but also:
Here’s something to get your teeth into. Over at LaptopMag, a whole host of Androids have been put through their paces in a grueling battery life endurance test. The goal was to keep the phones’ screens on while doing a moderate amount of processing, namely cyclically browsing a collection of web pages. Despite the supposed power savings afforded by AMOLED screens, the phones employing that screen technology fell quite a ways behind in comparison to the traditional LCD phones.
(before it launched), the Quadrant scores of the Motorola Droid 2 leaked. We called it a monster when it hit 1,458. Today, Droid-Life has scored a few more leaked benchmarks, this time of the Droid 2 World Edition (which is rumored to be replacing the D2). The results: a Quadrant score of 1709 thanks to a CPU clocked at 1.2 GHz. For perspective, keep in mind that a stock EVO manages around 1100.
The world of smartphones moves fast. How fast, you ask? So fast that a device that is just days over being a month old is already apparently getting phased out. The Motorola Droid 2 was just released in August but it's possible that this Droid lived fast and will die young.
Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a giveaway featuring not one, but ten cases from these 2 quality manufacturers: Gizmo Dorks and Amzer! They are:
Hot on the heels of yesterday's live wallpaper leak for the Droid 2 R2-D2 edition, today MyDroidWorld continued the system dump disassembly by releasing 14 static JPG wallpapers that will make any Star Wars fan feel nostalgic (and some maybe teary-eyed).