In a surprise move last night, Android 4.4.4 made an appearance and OTA updates began rolling out to select Nexus devices. Naturally, it’s time to talk updates, especially for Motorola phones (some of which were updated to Android 4.4.3 during its short one-week lifespan). We now know about plans for Motorola’s most recent Droid phones — a collaboration with Verizon Wireless — in terms of upcoming software updates.
According to Motorola employee David Schuster, the Droid phones will leapfrog 4.4.3 and jump straight to 4.4.4, primarily because of an important security fix for an OpenSSL vulnerability (no, not Heartbleed — that was squashed in 4.4.3).
This means another five-week technical approval process is at hand, and this isn’t even considering other delays. We also don’t know about other Motorola phones (even on other carriers) such as the Moto X, G, and E in terms of when they can expect to see the bump up.
Here’s the entirety of what Schuster had to say:
Sorry for the delay in giving an update on the 4.4.3 upgrades but I had to wait unit Google announced KitKat 4.4.4 today (I am bound by a NDA). A significant security vulnerability was discovered by OpenSSL (https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140605.txt) and is fixed in KitKat 4.4.4. We had to wait until KitKat 4.4.4 became available. Consequently, all of our 4.4.3 upgrades that were in carrier labs worldwide (including the 2013 Droid’s) had to be respun, tested and resubmitted again. This was a significant unplanned effort that we had to undertake. We should be re-entering labs next week and hopefully getting TA (technical approval) in 3 to 5 weeks later depending on the carrier.
No comments:
Post a Comment