As part of a statement on the general state of software updates at Motorola, VP of Product Management Punit Soni has revealed that a new early update testing program will be unveiled, known as Test Drive.
We know it’s important for many of you to get the latest Android software upgrades onto your phones as quickly as possible. With that in mind, we’re also introducing Test Drive, a new program that will allow consumers to take our major software upgrades for a trial run and provide valuable feedback before we launch the upgrade publicly. Starting with Android 4.2, the next iteration of Jelly Bean, we will release a preview of our software to a few hundred consumers that sign up for Test Drive. More details on how to sign-up and participate will be announced on the blog soon.
Motorola already has a "soak test" program in place on the Motorola Support forums, but that program currently selects randomly among forum members who have a registered device eligible for a new update. This new program will actually allow to sign up specifically for the Test Drive program, and be selected (once again, probably at random) to try out newer updates. This will be limited to a few hundred people, so expect fierce competition in terms of your chance of being selected.
Test Drive will only be available for phones going to Android 4.2 or beyond (as time goes on), so presumably the old soak test program will continue for Motorola devices getting maintenance releases, but that will not be seeing Jelly Bean updates. Signup details will be coming soon, so we'll keep an eye out.