Verizon Slowly Rolling Out Motorola Droid Android 2.1 Update

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Android 2.1 was released on January 12th, 2010 and made it’s first appearance on Google’s Nexus One phone. Over two months later, Verizon Wireless is just starting to begin rolling out the OTA update to Android 2.1 tomorrow. The Motorola Droid is one of the more popular Android phones, so what took so long?

Rumors began persisting that the Motorola Droid was going to be getting the Android 2.1 update around early February (with us reporting on February 8th that the Droid was getting the Android 2.1 update). A tipster familiar with the situation reports to website AndroidandMe that the reason for the delay behind the 2.1 update isn’t the fault of Verizon Wireless, Motorola, or Google. You can blame HP.

A company named Bitfone, a wholly-owned subsidiary of HP creates mobile phone management software that lets phone manufacturers and service providers remotely manage the mobile phones their provide. They help control things like OTA updates and remote diagnostics. According to the tipster, Bitfone is having issues with their software that applies the updates, as well as the network infrastructure that host the application.

While a lot of us have really been baffled by the delay of the Android 2.1 update, the tipster said that engineers at Bitfone are constantly being “bugged” by Motorola for their issues and the impending deadline of March 18th.

Verizon plans to begin rolling out the updates tomorrow. 1,000 random Motorola Droids will receive the update tomorrow at 9am. 12 hours later, another 1,000 Droids will receive the update. Verizon and Bitfone will wait another 24 hours before pushing out a big update to 200,000 phones. After that, they’ll wait 12 more hours before rolling out another 200,000 updates. The Motorola Droid has been a pretty popular phone, so you can imagine how long this will all take.

It’s a bit of a strange method to see them rolling out the OTA update in such a piecemeal fashion. One assumes that Bitfone hasn’t ironed out their issues yet with the software. Issues with the back-end middleware aside – Motorola Droid owners should be pleased they’re finally getting the update that will enable multi-touch, live wallpapers and Google Maps Navigation.