Motorola’s Android 2.2 rollout: What a mess

Delays, missing features, cease-and-desist letters, oh my! Verizon Wireless’s rollout of Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) to Motorola Droid phones is becoming an exercise in frustration.

Motorola’s Froyo problems started with the original Droid, whose Android 2.2 rollout began the first week of August. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the full Froyo experience Droid users were hoping for, because this particular phone does not tether or become a mobile hot spot with the latest OS version.

That Droid Froyo update also didn’t come with Adobe Flash Player 10.1. A second update, which began rolling out for Verizon Wireless customers just yesterday, will let Droid owners download Flash Player 10.1 from the Android Market. (Despite ongoing claims for weeks from Google and Adobe that Flash Player is “shipping,” the final, not-a-beta version only became available in the Android Market on Aug. 16, and only then for the few Froyo devices available.)

The news is worse for owners of the Motorola Milestone, the Droid’s overseas twin. According to Motorola’s official upgrade timeline, the Milestone will get Froyo at year-end 2010, but only in Europe and South Korea. The Android 2.2 upgrade for Milestone is “under evaluation” for Canada, Latin America, and Mexico.

As expected, other Motorola phones that launched with pre-2.1 versions of Android won’t get Froyo at all, at least for the foreseeable future. Motorola’s Cliq, Cliq XT, and Backflip are waiting for Android 2.1, for which the Motorola Devour was deemed unfit.

With problems like those, who could blame users for taking Froyo-related matters into their own hands? Well, Motorola, apparently. After a leaked Android 2.2 ROM became available through unofficial sources, Motorola sent cease-and-desist letters to websites hosting the update, according to IntoMobile. The reasoning may be sound — after all, folks who jumped the gun on Froyo for Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G ran into bugs that had to be patched later — but it doesn’t look good when lawyers try to stop people from making their phones better.

In fairness, Motorola’s not the only company to struggle with Froyo. Owners of HTC’s Droid Incredible are still waiting for their update — rumors of August 18 didn’t pan out — and the brand-new Dell Streak tablet is stuck on Android 1.6 until 2011. Samsung’s Galaxy phones are all expected to get Froyo, but with no date announced for U.S. wireless carriers.

So while Motorola gets an extra dose of shame for shutting down Droid X users, the only phone maker to truly ace the Android 2.2 launch was, of course, Google.