Motorola Droid Android 2.1

Earlier today Verizon started rolling out the long awaited and repeatedly delayed Android 2.1 upgrade to the selected few Motorola Droid customers - 1,000 to be exact.

The Rollout

According to the internal document obtained by Android Central, the rollout schedule is the following:

  • the first 1,000 very lucky Droid owners should have already gotten their OTA (over the air) updates today, March 30th, at 9AM PST/noon EST. If you are one of the lucky few, please share your experience with us, as soon as you stop calling all your friends to share the joy but right before you go on a spree of making fun of all the Hero owners with their ancient 1.5s.
  • Barring any complications with the morning update, Verizon promised to start the next batch of 9,000 people also today, March 30th, at 8:59PM PST/11:59PM EST. This stage will occur throughout the all of Wednesday, the 31st. Together, these 10,000 Droiders are still quite a select group compared to the other 1.5+ million customers who will have to wait their turn even longer.
  • After 2 of these carefully planned days, Verizon promises to speed up the pace and start pushing out 200,000 updates each day, starting on Thursday, April 1st, until all Droids have been updated.

New Features In Android 2.1

The 2.1 update brings

  • pinch to zoom (aka multitouch) to the Browser, Maps, and Gallery
  • Google Maps update
  • improved pattern lock
  • Yahoo mail support (but not on WiFi)
  • speech-to-text in all text entry boxes - this is probably the most exciting feature as Google's ability to transcribe text works incredibly well
  • Google Goggles are now included by default
  • a new 3D gallery layout, a-la Cooliris; sync with Picasa online albums
  • live wallpapers
  • new News and Weather widgets
  • new application launcher in which icons fly in rather than slide
  • 5 home screens - that's 2 more than the previous Android versions had - this was actually incorrect - apparently only the Nexus One 2.1 has 5 screens
  • improved handset audio when disconnecting a wired headset

Update: Here is the official Verizon feature list for Android 2.1 on the Droid - http://support.vzw.com/pdf/system_update/moto_droid.pdf

Have you gotten your upgrade yet? Share your experience in the comments.