Gadget News

Pop the champagne! A member of Motorola’s Droid family is getting upgraded to Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread!

On Wednesday Verizon Wireless announced that Droid X users would start receiving the update on Friday, May 27.

According to Verizon, enhancements that come with the update include a new user interface with new colors, a download manager for your apps and attachments, faster access to the numeric keyboard mode, and autosuggestions to group your contacts faster.

Update instructions are posted here. You can either download it manually, which is useful when you’re roaming, or wait for the over-the-air update.

This means that a Motorola employee wasn’t fibbing on Monday when he told a forum of disgruntled Droid users, all still running Android 2.2 Froyo, that their Gingerbread updates were on the way. He specified that Droid X was scheduled to receive the update by “the end of the second quarter of the year,” (i.e. June), barring Verizon’s approval. Other Droid phones are scheduled to receive the update by the end of the third quarter, he said.

Last year, Motorola launched a number of Droid phones through Verizon Wireless, including the Droid X in June, the Droid 2 in August, and the Droid 2 Global and Droid Pro in November. All currently run Android 2.2.

Google’s newest available Android OS build, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, debuted in December on the Samsung Nexus S smartphone. So understandably Motorola Droid users, like numerous other Android device holders, have been wondering when they are getting some Gingerbread. Oddly, even Motorola’s newly-launched Droid X2 device comes with Froyo.

Earlier this month Google announced that the next OS version, Android 3.0, or ‘Ice Cream Sandwich,’ will come out in the fourth quarter. But so far handset manufacturers and carriers have not given Android users much confidence that they will receive their OS updates in a timely manner.

According to Google, by the end of April only 4.3 percent of Android users were using six-month-old Android 2.3 and above.

For more on Android fragmentation, see “Android Fragmentation: FUD and Facts.”

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Follow me on twitter: cuthut.com TechnoBuffalo: technobuffalo.com In this ‘Versus’ battle we put the Motorola Droid (Android 2.0) against the BlackBerry Storm 2.