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Motorola would like to ship stock Android but Verizon does not allow

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 17 Oct 2012 7:45 User comments (11)

Motorola would like to ship stock Android but Verizon does not allow Motorola was asked why they don't ship stock Android with their new phones in the U.S., despite being owned by Google. The answer was not pretty.
Senior Vice President of product Rick Osterloh said the company would like to ship all new devices with stock Android, but the U.S.'s largest carrier, Verizon, won't have it.

Says Osterloh: "Going forward, we're going to try to be as close to the base as we can be, because we think that's the right thing for users. We think users also want fast upgrades and upgrades for their phones over the long haul, so we're going to be focus on that as well. It's a little bit different than what a lot of OEMs are doing and certainly what Motorola did in the past, but going forward that's going to be our strategy."

One good example is Motorola's new Razr HD. The OS is very close to stock Android, but it comes with some Verizon bloatware and a minor skin overlay. Because of this, the device ships with Android 4.0, not 4.1 Jelly Bean.



Although that is their strategy going forward to ship stock, the exec concedes Verizon and the carriers are still in charge (via Verge): "We are going to have to do some customization. Our partners sometimes want customizations. [...] Our interest is to make it as close to Android as possible and generally we negotiate somewhere in the middle."

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11 user comments

117.10.2012 11:53

I knew it, F verizon. I have a Droid as my work phone and the bloatware is horrible. I don't root and remove because it is a work phone. My personal phone is T-Mobile and modified to hell. I will never ever go to Verizon, two strikes in one week (rumors state they sell your data info too). Someone needs to slap this company around with huge fines and penalties or better yet people need to cancel their service in huge numbers.

217.10.2012 12:39

Perhaps it's because Verizon knows that Motorola phones are junk so they're mandating this to penalize them.

317.10.2012 13:48

Quote:
We think users also want fast upgrades and upgrades for their phones over the long haul, so we're going to be focus on that as well.
As an Atrix 4G user I spew my cereal forth in laughter. OK, not really. But it paints a picture. After the only "update" we got had no real changes except to break 802.11x enterprise network connectivity I scoff at that statement. Hear me scoffing?

417.10.2012 13:49

Well if google would read the news after the saile to crown castle that make T-mobile the biggest phone company. If google was smart they would start shipping them to T-mobile and let not verizon push around like they done for years.

517.10.2012 14:15

This might explain why some phones don't make it to Verizon (Windows Phones)

617.10.2012 18:57

Verizon does this only cause they can. Hell, the FCC won't even screw with Verizon cause they're the very ones that gave them this spectrum for 4G service in the first place cause they had the money and infrastructure to do it. So in turn, because of ownership, they can say whatever the hell they wanna say about their phones. However, I do like what some of you guys mentioned about having customers dropped in the masses. Only trouble with that is Verizon knows it's the largest network in the US right now, and about the only reliable one at that. When you have 400+ cities that have 4G from Verizon, there's not much that many can do, cause even Sprint or AT&T can even come close to that figure. Verizon says look at what I can do, and what you can't! Eat it Verizon. Perhaps maybe the CEO needs to slapped around some and get off his high horse...

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 17 Oct 2012 @ 6:59

717.10.2012 22:45

Moto stopped updating my top of the line (at the time of sale) Droid X2 after 11 months. The bootloader is locked still so I can't update it properly either. It wouldn't cost them a dime to release a few lines of code. Their new pledge doesn't mean much. They make promises easily, then forget to keep them.

Our X2's are still buggy but support is gone with a phone that's still under contract. Developers would & could fix this phone but they keep it locked down. Don't buy a new Moto until they set the old (less than a year and a half from launch) ones free.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 17 Oct 2012 @ 10:53

818.10.2012 08:08

US carriers p1ss me off! It's not like this in other countries.

918.10.2012 12:34

Originally posted by bdaleypsu:
US carriers p1ss me off! It's not like this in other countries.
It is far worse in some other countries.

Personally, I dropped verizon a while back to go to T-Mobile...and then T-Mobile applied a contract to the phone that I bought outright without my permission, then changed their data and voice policies to make the phone virtually useless, then charged me $200 to get out of a contract I never agreed to. Verizon may be scum, but they are better than T-Mobile in terms of scams and better than everyone else in terms of service.

I really don't think Motorola cares that Verizon tells them to install bloatware and outdated distros of Android...their hardware is such garbage that they happily welcome people rooting their phones just so they can get out of the warranty. If they actually did care, they would either preinstall this crap to the SD card so it could be removed, or they would change their warranty terms so rooting would not void it...then release a one-click root-n-clean app that my grandma could use.

1028.10.2012 13:17

There Verizon goes - "thinking" they know what I want again, instead of asking.

1127.12.2012 19:27
RandomUser
Unverified new user

Sorry, I call BS. Motorola has made no visible effort to escape from being Verizon's ass-slave. Look at their model lineup and look how many of their devices display Verizon logo, and notice the size of that logo compared to their own. Look how they treat non-Verizon end users as well as how well they update their devices.

And there's that whole "going forward thing", yeah, that's an evasive way of saying "we're screwing all you current device owners so that someday some future device owners will be treated with the respect that you deserved but will never get. Of course there's no guarantee of who those future device owners will be, it really just depends on when we decide to get off our ass and live up to our commitments"

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