Let’s get something cleared up here … I’m not annoyed at Motorola for not providing Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) for the Atrix 4G.
Not at all.
Companies need to make decisions about what hardware they are going to support and what hardware they aren’t going to support.
I participate in those kinds of decisions quite frequently at work.
What annoys me about what Motorola did is the fact that they lead consumers on for quite a long time … indicating that ICS was going to be provided on the Atrix 4G.
This was on the ICS status page on the Motorola web site for quite a long time …
… which implies that they were actually working on the new OS version for the Atrix 4G and had a schedule.
In my opinion … it is pretty much an advertised promise to Atrix 4G owners that the phone that they currently own will get the new OS and a PROMISE.
The fact that they changed the status to …
… (near the end of Q3 2012) at the very least breaks the promise and trust and is, quite possibly, false advertising.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if someone filed a class action law suit against Motorola for false advertising. I don’t know how far it would go … because they did offer a $100 rebate on an upgrade to a current phone (although you do have to turn in your Atrix 4G).
Of course, why would anyone in their right mind take advantage of the offer? As their own experience has shown that the new phone they purchase (for a $100 discount) might have a one or two year lifespan.
I’m not going to take advantage of that offer … as I’m probably going to be switching back to iPhone as soon as I can. But the whole situation really annoys me. I certainly won’t purchase or recommend Motorola phones in the future.
Unless you can provide some evidence as to why you can’t make good on a promise … you really need to make good on the promise.
In the mean time … I may look into one of the 3rd party ICS implementations that are supposed to work on the Atrix 4G.
I can certainly sympathize with your frustration.
I used to follow the Android blogs religiously when I had my HTC EVO 4G from Sprint. Whenever there was a new version of Android that was being launched, it was always a guessing game as to which devices and carriers HTC would update and which ones would not.
Only speculating here, but I can envision a scenario where a device manufacturer has hopes their devices will support a new release, but won’t know until for sure until they get into full QA and benchmark standards. It could have been what happened here, that the final testing failed to perform and the gave up.
I agree fully with the misleading, though. If there was any doubt that their development would not pass benchmark tests, it probably should have been listed differently (maybe something like “in research” or just “unknown”). It’s bad PR nonetheless, and it just goes to show that the person/people in charge of that type of public communication doesn’t fully understand the implications of their messaging and/or the mindset of their audience. Seems like Communications 101 to me.