If you’ve picked up a new Motorola Droid Razr, you’re probably wondering when you’re going to get the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade. Well, Motorola feels your pain and it has written a blog post outlining its Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade plans.
Motorola doesn’t hit on many new beats, as it reiterates that the Droid Razr, Droid Bionic and Xoom will definitely get the 4.0 upgrade but it does give us a deeper look at what it takes to upgrade these devices to the latest version of Android. The process goes like this: Google open sources the latest version, Motorola adapts that to its devices and adds its own touches like MotoCast, it stabilizes the upgrade, submits that to carrier certification, does a customer pre-release version and then pushes it out to the wider audience.
What’s interesting about this is how long the steps take. Motorola is pretty quiet about how long it takes to adapt its MotoBlur-ish user interface and features to the source code but it hints that this could take about two months. The carrier certification part can then take one to three months, so even if everything goes as smoothly as possible, you’re still looking at three to five months before an update comes out.
It’s a much different story if you’re trying to upgrade on iOS, as Apple controls that update experience and it has fewer models to cater to. Google cannot and will not take that kind of approach with Android, so it looks like we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the latest version unless you pick up a Galaxy Nexus.
Still, I appreciate Motorola being open and transparent about its approach to upgrading and what could cause delays.
