Google is finally close to sealing the deal on the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola. When the move was announced back in August, some speculated that the acquisition was more than simple patent shopping and that a Google-owned Motorola would benefit from preferential access to new, faster Android rollouts. But for now, Motorola doesn’t seem to be in a hurry with their ICS rollout.
A freshly updated roadmap shows that most current Motorola customers will have to wait until Q2 or even Q3 of 2012 to enjoy some Android 4.0 goodness on their phones or tablets. U.S. customers have the hardest time: with a couple of exceptions, all ICS rollouts are slated for the third quarter of 2012 – July to September.
Stuck in the “Evaluation and Planning” limbo?
Motorola’s chart shows that all devices equipped with 512 MB RAM, including the Droid 3, Droid X2, or the Milestone 3, are in the first stage of the rollout – Evaluation and Planning. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the devices will ever move out of this stage. The same goes for many devices rocking 1GB of RAM, such as the Droid Bionic, Droid 4, or Xyboard 8.2 and 10.1. As The Verge notices, this probably has to do more with the carriers (Verizon, I’m looking at you) than with any technical issues.Other Motorola users can count themselves lucky. International Xoom (WiFi only) and RAZR owners and U.S.-based Xoom Family Edition owners can expect Android 4.0 from the beginning of April. Other devices that are in the Development stage (the second part of the rollout) are slated for the third quarter – the Atrix 2, Atrix 4G, Photon 4G, and the Xoom 2 (non-U.S. customers).
As you can see, apart from the news that some devices will eventually get ICS, Motorola fans have little to cheer about. Let’s hope that once the Google-Moto marriage gets passed the honeymoon phase, things will get better in this area.
Check out the full list of upgradable Motorola devices, broken down per region, on Motorola’s official forums.
http://www.androidauthority.com
