The nation's top carrier told us Friday that it will push out Android 2.2, also known as the "Froyo" operating system, to the company's Motorola Droid phones next week.
That announcement comes right after Sprint announced they're rolling out Android 2.2 to the company's HTC EVO phones next week as well.
Motorola Inc. reported surging sales of smart phones in the second quarter, but co-CEO Sanjay Jha, head of the phone division, said it is hampered by short supplies of chips.
An analyst asked him to explain how this affects its latest smart phone, the Droid X, which went on sale through Verizon Wireless two weeks ago.
QUESTION: Can you talk a little bit about the supply and demand dynamics of the Droid X launch?
ANSWER: Certainly Droid X has exceeded our expectations. But we believe that we will catch up with demand some time through the course of this quarter. We find multiple components in the industry being constrained.
I think the investment largely in semiconductor space of various different kinds over the last two and a half years has been below par. And I believe that the industry now is trying to compensate for that, and there is some greater investment in the semiconductor space.
The new upgrade will give the Droid many new features, including improved speed, voice dialing over Bluetooth, a faster browser, the ability to store apps on an SD card, and the potential to run Adobe Flash when that software is ready.
We have a hands-on with Android 2.2, otherwise known as "Froyo," from when it was first announced back in May.
Google has had trouble getting the company's Android partners to keep up with the blistering pace of software updates. Android 2.2 was announced in May, but for a while only the failed Google Nexus One phone (now off the market in the U.S.) could run the new OS.
Samsung, Motorola and HTC have all pledged Android 2.2 upgrades for more phones including the Samsung Vibrant and Motorola Droid X, but the company hasn't yet delivered.
Meanwhile, many phones on the market run even older versions of Android. T-Mobile's Motorola CLIQ and CLIQ XT are still running Android 1.5, to the rage of many owners who were promised an upgrade to version 2.1 during the first half of this year.
