hacker emblem

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Droid 2 Global Gets Gingerbread

Today Motorola and Verizon have released the Gingerbread update for the Droid 2 Global finally bringing it up to speed with more recent devices. This is however a soak test meaning that it will only be delivered to a select few beta testers. If all goes well with the Beta testing, owners of the device should expect to see the update notification within the next few weeks. The update is 103MB in size and comes with multiple enhancements such as improved battery life while using WiFi and Bluetooth. The update can be user initiated by navigating to Settings-->AboutPhone--->SystemUpdates. Once selected the phone will prompt you to download and install the update. Downloading could take up to 30 minutes and then you will be unable to use your phone for roughly 5-10 minutes while it updates. Once the file is finished installing the device will reboot and you will find yourself staring at your brand new Gingerbread enabled device.

Motorola has included a few enhancements of their own to this setup. A new download manager app is pre-installed which will allow you to manage any downloads from the browser or any other applications. A new tab in the "ManageApps" section allows you to see running apps and how much memory they are taking up. There are now customizable dock buttons where the contact and phone icons were next to the dock button. These can now be used for any app shortcut that you want. Speaking of the dock, you can now set customizable app groups like is possible on the Motorola Xoom. Data has gotten more secure thanks to SD card encryption and improvements to the VPN client. Most everything else is minor or bug fixes such as an improved color scheme, fixing the messaging bug where messages were sent to the unintended recipient, improvement in stability and freezing issues, force close issues with included apps, and then supposedly battery life enhancements while using WiFi and Bluetooth.

Once I receive the update I will go hands on and write a formal review of the enhancements and improvements to the overall system.

No comments:

Post a Comment