Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside is under fire for an abandoned pledge to update three 2011 phones to Ice Cream Sandwich.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET )
Doran Else bought his Photon 4G last October, lured by the fast dual-core processor and by the close relationship between Motorola and its new owner, Google. Motorola had recently joined the Android Upgrade Alliance, promising to release operating system updates to all its phones for 18 months following their release.
But for Else and thousands of others, those operating system updates turned out to be a mirage. Last Friday, buried in a Motorola forum, the company quietly abandoned its update pledge, killing off plans to ever update the Photon 4G. The Electrify, a re-branded Photon available on the US Cellular network, and the Atrix 4G, a flagship phone that debuted on AT&T in the United States, got the axe as well.
"Just seems they were happy to join the alliance when it helped them sell handsets," Else said in an e-mail. "Now that it's time to do the work, they're all dropping devices. This latest announcement from Moto is just ridiculous."
The result is that Else and thousands of people in the middle of two-year carrier contracts will have to use Android 2.3, known as Gingerbread, for the foreseeable future. Motorola had promised owners of the Photon, Electrify, and Atrix an upgrade to to Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, which would bring a host of new features and security updates. Instead they are stuck on Gingerbread, an operating system that was already a year old when Else bought his phone.
There was no word on why the company had twice said upgrades were coming -- first in the third quarter of this year, then the fourth quarter -- or why it had bothered joining the Android Upgrade Alliance, if it couldn't meet its requirements.
The Photon 4G is among the phones Motorola won't upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET )
Same old song
Every few months, it seems, we hear a new version of an old story: the maker of an expensive smartphone announces it won't be upgraded to the latest version of Android, and consumers cry foul.
But this one is different. First, Motorola told customers they would upgrade the phones for 18 months after they came out, a statement that drove sales of the devices. Second, Google owns both Android and Motorola, making it all the more puzzling why the business units didn't work together to make an upgrade happen.
Finally, there are signs that for some Android devotees, Motorola's abandonment of its year-old phones is the last straw.
We asked Motorola smartphone owners how they were feeling about the company -- and Android -- these days. Jacob Depenbusch, a Photon owner, offered a typical account. He researched a variety of Android phones and settled on the Photon after learning it was on the upgrade path.
"My family and myself all bought the Photon because it met the specifications of being upgraded to ICS," Depenbusch said. "Had they not promised an update, the phone would've been out of the question. And then they reneged on the promise. They benefited financially from lying to us, and these phones certainly aren't cheap. This is an appalling business practice."
Several owners said they had filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau over their treatment by Motorola. Others said they had purchased a Motorola for the last time. That's despite the fact that Motorola is offering a $100 credit to anyone willing to purchase a new phone from the company.
"The fact they are offering $100 to swap to another Motorola phone is laughable," said Danny Brewer, who owns an Atrix. "I will not be touching it or another Motorola phone with a barge pole. I don't want a new phone -- I want my current phone, that I have to keep for another year, as that's how long my contract is for.
"There are very few companies that I have felt I needed to boycott," he added. "But Motorola has just earned that honor."
The really unfortunate part of this? Most of the people who we interviewed love their phones. They find them fast, reliable, and fun to play with. They want to keep using them well into the future. They'd just like to do it on Ice Cream Sandwich -- an operating system that was released to manufacturers a year ago.
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