Motorola has started testing Android 5.1 Lollipop for the Moto X 2013, which means an official Lollipop upgrade for the two-year-old smartphone is just around the corner.
In a Google+ post, Motorola senior director of software product management David Schuster announced that the Lenovo-owned smartphone maker has started testing Android 5.1 for the first-generation Moto X for some users in the U.S. and Latin America via its early testing program TestDrive. This will be followed by the full release of Android 5.1 for all Moto X 2013 owners a few weeks after testing.
"I am glad to announce that we are starting TestDrive in both the U.S. and LatAm," Schuster says. "If all goes well, we should start full deployments in a few weeks."
Owners of the Moto X 2013 have been complaining about the length of time it has taken Motorola to upgrade the smartphone's software to Android Lollipop. Schuster did not specify the reason for the delay but pointed to the "lack of support from some of our partners," implying that it is not all Motorola's fault.
"I know that a lot of people have been asking about the status of the Moto X (1st Gen) Lollipop upgrade," Schuster says. "I can see the frustration and in some cases the anger about how long it has taken to get the upgrade deployed."
Motorola previously announced that the Moto X 2013 will not receive the update to Android 5.0 Lollipop, instead skipping ahead to Android 5.1. The plan was to hold off the update to Android 5.0 while Google issues fixes for the major bugs and problems that riddled the first version of Android Lollipop so that Moto X 2013 owners will not have to experience them.
The first Moto X, which was released with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out of the box in 2013, has been upgraded all the way to Android 4.4 KitKat. The updates, however, stopped coming in November, when Google released Android Lollipop.
It's unclear which variants of the Moto X 2013 will first receive the update, but as with the usual case, it will most likely be the unlocked smartphones that will get Android 5.1 followed by the carrier versions.
Last week, Motorola unveiled the release notes for both the 2013 and 2014 versions of the Moto X as well as the entry-level Moto E. Since this is a major upgrade for the original Moto X, users will see a Material Design makeover of the user interface as well as a host of new features that the second-generation Moto X received during the upgrade to Android Lollipop, such as the lockscreen notifications that can be opened straight from the lockscreen or swiped away to be ignored. The update will also include a new flashlight function available in Quick Settings as well as several Motorola services such as Moto Voice, Moto Active Display, Moto Actions, and Motorola Assist.
Photo: Ands Leonardo | Flickr
