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.

We’ve continuously been fans of the odd form factor espoused by Motorola’s longstanding Ming series of devices in China — a form factor seen only briefly in the US with Verizon’s Krave — and at this time that Moto’s made the leap to Android across its global smartphone lineup, it makes sense to move the MING from custom-cooked Linux to Android, too. The A1680 has been floating around in the wild since back in April of this year, but Motorola’s MOTDEV site for developers has at this time spilled the beans on all the crucial specs. Strangely, there are some basics missing like proximity and ambient light sensors — usually must-haves for touchscreen devices — and the 624MHz PXA935 core should doom it to the decrease end of the performance spectrum, but at least it can scale up to 32GB of add-on storage and you’ve got a WVGA display at your disposal. Hey, Moto, if you’re listening: we still think this kind of design is pretty cool, in the odd chance you’re game to give Westerners another shot at it.

You might recall that Verizon handed out “Droid Does” t-shirts to some early buyers of the original Motorola Droid — but if you thought the Android-themed gratitude from Big Red ended there, you’d apparently be Truly wrong. Droid Life is reporting that some Droid X owners are at this time receiving packages with seemingly badass new eye exam-themed shirts and coupons good for 25 percent off accessories, perfect for that silicone case you know you’ve had your eye on. Whether Droid 2 owners will receive the same royal treatment remains to be seen, but honestly, isn’t an R2-D2-themed version enough of a thank you?

Droid X owners being showered with gifts? originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.