Mobile Phone News

As is becoming almost customary with high-profile smartphone releases these days, Verizon and Motorola have already gotten around to releasing the Droid 2’s first over-the-air firmware update just days after its initial launch on the 12th. There’s not much in this place — the most important fix seems to be that you can scroll text and picture messages at this time — and most notably, the severe signal strength issues we saw in our review unit don’t seem to have been addressed in this place (and we’ve verified that after updating). All we can hope at this point, we suppose, is that it’s squared away by the time the R2-D2 version or the dual-mode version launches… whichever comes first.

Apparently, the latest firmware update for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 (which, yes, is still based on Android 1.6) does more harm than good — if you’re frequently using WiFi and you find yourself in weak cellular coverage, anyhow. Basically, any time your cellular signal drops to zero then bounces back, WiFi turns itself off, which is particularly brutal considering that a weak signal is probably why you’re leaning on WiFi in the first place. We don’t have details on what X10s are affected, but R2BA026 sounds like the offending version — so if you see it, we’d probably stay far away until SE manages to push another update.

Expecting Froyo? Well hang on a minute there, partner, because that’s not Truly what you’re getting — but when it comes to phone firmware updates, we like ‘em early and often, so we’re not plan to complain about this one. T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G Slide will be getting an over-the-air boost starting today, promising a handful of improvements and bug fixes including improved battery life, the ability to send MMS messages while connected to WiFi, and a few changes to the so-called Genius Button and the Faves Gallery. Looks like all customers should have it by the 19th of the month, so hang tight if you don’t get it right away.