Motorola Mobility, despite being acquired by Google, is going to leave some of its customers with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), according to a recent post by the company in its forums. The company is not going to upgrade some of its devices to Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0, which was released in 2011. The phones that will have to remain in the past are the Atrix 4G, Photon 4G and Electrify. The company was apologetic about not being able to provide the needed updates and said that regular maintenance updates will be offered to ensure that the devices continue working properly.
Android 4.0 was first released a year ago in October 2011 and it was announced that any Android 2.3 device can be ported to the latest version. However, the upgrade path to ICS has not been as smooth as Google would have liked and four out of five Android customers are still stuck with Gingerbread. The next version, Android 4.1 or Jellybean, is available only to a mere 1.3% of users. Motorola is looking to retain customer loyalty despite the tough call it had to take with regard to the three devices and is offering a $100 credit to customers using these phones. This means that customers with any of the three devices will be entitled to a $100 discount on their next purchase of a Motorola phone. The scheme is expected to kick start in the United States immediately and later around the globe.
According to Dennis Woodside, chief of Motorola, most of the devices that have been released by Motorola since 2011 will be eligible for an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich but there are some that are going to be left behind as an upgrade will in fact degrade the performance of the device. This seems logical to a certain extent, especially if the phone’s processor cannot handle the demands of ICS. However, Android fans have stated that when Sony can update its entire 2011 Xperia line up to Ice Cream Sandwich, there is no reason for Motorola to not be able to do the same, especially when the phones in question are more powerful than Sony’s 2011 Xperia devices.
While a phone being left behind is definitely a serious issue in the Android platform, the situation is far worse for tablets. The initial wave of Android tablets were released with Android 3.1, called Honeycomb, and have only recently received updates to the ICS. Whether Jellybean will arrive in the near future is a question only the manufacturers can answer.
