latest
When Motorola announced a few months back that it was not going to update most of its 2011 Android devices to Jelly Bean, owners were understandably upset. Moto attempted to calm the masses by offering a $100 trade-in credit. Now the details have been finalized and the program is looking much less appealing than everyone had hoped.
Gingerbread may have been out for nearly a year and a half now, but did you know there are some phones out there that have been living on nothing but Froyo this whole time? It's sad and it's true. Today, though, one abandoned phone is finding a new home on Gingebread: the CLIQ 2. Finally rolling out the 2.3 update, after launching back in January 2011 with Android 2.2 on board. How quickly these short 16 months roll by.
Over on Motorola’s support forum, the company is recruiting 1000 customers to test and provide feedback on a Gingerbread software upgrade for the CLIQ 2. This usually heralds the coming of a software update available to the unwashed masses. While customers who buy devices like the CLIQ 2 may not be the same folks who are eager for the latest and the greatest software updates, Gingerbread will be arriving about 14 months after it was announced, and 13 months after the phone was released.
Even though Motorola's original CLIQ received a 2.1 upgrade a long time ago, CLIQ XT owners have been patiently (and impatiently) waiting for the good news ever since. Unfortunately, it will never come, as Motorola's official decision, posted on their Android Software Upgrade News, is to forever doom it to 1.5. It is hard to imagine which differences between the original CLIQ and the XT prompted Motorola to refuse the upgrade, because the phones are really very much the same, and the biggest difference between them is the physical keyboard on the CLIQ.
If you are in the market for an affordable Android phone, you'll be happy to hear that the new Motorola CLIQ 2 just became available on T-Mobile's site. The device costs just $99.99 on contract and has a $399.99 unsubsidized price tag. Unfortunately, the instant rebate is only going to cover $200, so the other $100 discount will be issued in the form of a prepaid rebate card.
What a night! Along with announcing the Motorola Xoom, Motorola's CEO also announced the CLIQ 2 and its crazy honeycomb-patterned sliding keyboard.
While Motorola's certainly got a few exciting devices in its pipeline - the dual-core Olympus and the Honeycomb tablet both look extremely intriguing - it looks like the company also plans to launch something considerably less high-end: the sequel to its first Android phone ever, the Cliq.