Almost a month ago, lucky HTC Legend owners on Vodaphone UK began receiving their Android 2.2 (Froyo) OTA updates. Surprisingly, carrier independent Legend variants, which would normally get updated first, were instead left behind.
Today, HTC finally let everyone in on the party and announced Froyo availability for all Legends:
To check for updates, turn on your device and go to Settings > About phone > System updates.
Welcome to the club!
Source: @HTC
Samsung, which has been under fire from consumers for repeatedly delaying Android 2.2. updates on their Galaxy S line of phones, recently posted an announcement for its Canadian customers on Bell, TELUS, and Rogers. In the announcement, Samsung apologized for delaying the long-awaited update and cited rigorous testing as the current stage of the rollout process.
Now, keeping in mind that these are just estimates, have a look at the upgrade timelines for your Canadian Galaxy S device:
It's quite sad that Gingerbread, the Android version following Froyo, will be released long before Froyo itself makes it to the biggest flagship device series Samsung offers and long after their European and Korean counterparts.
As we mentioned over the weekend, the UK Dell Streaks were on the verge of finally getting that sweet, delicious Froyo upgrade, and now we are able to provide the rollout schedule in more detail.
Starting November 15th, which is pretty much now, carrier unlocked devices will start to receive OTA (over-the-air) notifications allowing the Froyo update to be downloaded and applied. Carrier locked Streak OTAs will follow later on in December due to having to jump through extra hoops, i.e. the carriers, before any updates can be allowed to trickle in. Your Streak will check for a firmware update upon boot but you can force the check manually by going to Settings > About > System Updates.
One of the best places to buy your next Android smartphone is, undoubtedly, Amazon.com, due to its excellent customer service, aggressive pricing, abundance of conveniently placed user reviews, lack of tax, and free shipping. Even better, a few months ago, Amazon opened up a dedicated Amazon Wireless store to concentrate on competitively selling cell phones and service, including support for existing customer upgrades, family plans, and much more competitive deals.
One obvious omission in the Amazon Wireless store has been a complete lack of Sprint devices and plans. Sprint support was said to be coming for months, and while Sprint phones were available on Amazon.com itself, AmazonWireless.com remained Sprint-free, which means no aggressive pricing, support for existing line upgrades, or family plans.
Motorola CLIQ owners have been waiting for this day for a very-very-very long time, but, believe it or not, it's finally here. Following the leaked version from 3 weeks ago, the official Éclair for you phones (but not CLIQ XT just yet) is now available from Motorola - not as an OTA, but as a downloadable .zip.
Why Motorola put together the longest update instructions I've ever seen, with more warnings than a prescription drug, is beyond me - it seems to me like the same effect could have been achieved via the existing OTA (over-the-air) update mechanism Android already supports.
CLIQ XT owners may experience slight excitement reading this, but only slight - the OTA update version 1.32.20 rolling out now to CLIQ XTs around the country does not contain Android 2.1 - it's merely an incremental update over its existing ancient OS (what is it, 1.5 nowadays?). This update showed up a couple of days ago as a limited beta test, and, thankfully, it didn't take Motorola long to open the flood gates to all CLIQ XT owners.
If you remember, Motorola has been promising 2.1 for a while but recently updated the projections to late Q3 (fail)/early Q4 (Q4 started 4 days ago).
With the release of Froyo, Google promised to start decoupling applications bundled with the Android at the core - we've already seen it done to Maps, Navigation, Street View, and other programs. Today Gmail joins the party with the rollout of a new version 2.3 that can now be installed from the Market.
What does it mean? Well, previously, the Gmail app was only updated when you upgrade the whole operating system. Now that the app is downloadable from the Market directly, any updates will be available immediately.
Unfortunately, only users of Froyo and above are able to install the standalone version - everyone else is out of luck.
CyanogenMod 6 is one of the most popular Android custom ROMs, and for a good reason - besides supporting a myriad of devices, it is built from AOSP (Android Open Source Project), which means no extra garbage that normally comes installed by carriers and customizations/improvements for the people, by the people (the CM contributor community is huge).
Sprint has abandoned our beloved HTC Hero (it was my first Android device a bit under a year ago now and holds a special place in my heart) but the Android community hasn't. The Hero lives on - in fact it has been enjoying Android 2.2 Froyo for a while now in alpha/beta/RC form, not thanks to Sprint yet again.
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.
You'll notice that underneath the words "Droid 2 by Motorola" it states "while supplies last," indicating that there are a finite number left. According to BGR, the word on the street is that this could be to make way for the rumored Droid 2:World Edition which, as its name suggests, is simply the Droid 2 with world capabilities.
Unlocked HTC Desire owners have been enjoying their chilled Froyo update for over a month now, and today T-Mobile UK announced that its customers are finally going to be able to catch up to the rest of the pack.
Over at T-Mobile UK forums, Sorcha from the T-Mo team posted the following announcement:
Hi all,
We have some exciting news for all our Desire users.
The 2.2 firmware update (FroYo) will be available from today and will be sent over the air (OTA) direct to your phone over the coming weeks.
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