For quite a while the owners of the Motorola Atrix 4G have been waiting for an upgrade to the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version of Android.

Unfortunately, it appears that we’ve been waiting in vain …

Up until September 22nd, the official Motorola page indicated that the upgrade indicated that the new version of the OS was “In Development” and roll-out was expected to begin in the 3rd quarter of 2012.

This kind of indicated that they were working on the new version (hence the status of “Development”).

However, on September 22nd, they changed the status …

Hmmm … going from in development to “Further plans coming soon” sure sends a strong (if not clear) message: “We’re not going to be upgrading your phone”.

I really should have expected this … as I’ve heard that Motorola has a history of releasing a phone and only supporting a single OS release on it.

Well, strictly speaking, the Atrix supported two releases … Froyo and Gingerbread.  When I got my Atrix, Gingerbread had already been released and the phone was updated over the air before I even got to my car after the purchase.

To be honest … I haven’t been all that thrilled with the Atrix and Android in general.  The battery life on the Atrix is lousy, the finger print scanner died a while ago, and Android has always been pretty rough around the edges.

My original reason for getting an Android phone was so I could play around with mobile app development … but I never got into that.

My AT&T contract is up in March … so I’m probably going to go back to iPhone then.

I’m not sure I”m going to get an iPhone 5 though … might get a iPhone 4S instead.  It’ll be cheaper and the charging cables I currently own will work.

Update 9/28/12 from the Motorola Atrix forum …

Motorola Mobility continues to review how each device can deliver the very best experience possible, and at times, this can mean making tough choices – especially as it relates to Android software upgrades. Today, we need to let you know about some tough choices related to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich upgrades. Specifically, ATRIX 4G, Photon 4G and Electrify will not receive the ICS upgrade, but continue to be supported with maintenance releases to ensure optimum performance for the consumer.

Pretty much what I expected.