Never mind the fact that my nails need a manicure. I got the Froyo!
This morning, after checking my morning email and having my coffee and breakfast, I picked up my Motorola Droid and noticed a fortuitous message: “A system update is pending, would you like to install it?”
Now, I knew the Android Froyo 2.2 was coming to the Droid this week, but not that early — all accounts were that it was to begin rolling out on August 6, with a small seed group and then to follow on to larger blocks of phones over the next two weeks. Hey, I’m not complaining — but it looks like I might have been singled out.
I haven’t had much time to spend with Froyo yet, but overall, it looks to be a nice enhancement to the stock Verizon Droid software. All my applications and settings were preserved, but it did take longer for the update to apply — approximately 10 minutes, probably due to the amount of apps and data I had on my device.
The new Android 2.2 upgrade preserved all my apps and settings. The new launcher is displayed at the bottom.
A number of 3rd-party apps had to be upgraded immediately, such as Weatherbug and Twitter. A new version of FaceBook is now available which is more streamlined than previous releases and allows for friend requests to be responded to on the device.
The App listing screen is now more streamlined.
While the Adobe Flash Showcase was able to be installed on the device, and was eventually able to use Flash-based apps and videos, as seen in the demonstration above, I had some problems this morning getting Flash itself installed.
CNET News Flash videos playing on the Motorola Droid.
The Flash Player for Android 2.2 wasn’t listed on the Android Market — the Flash Showcase app attempts to install it remotely; I noticed a number of redirect messages and had a few timeouts and Android Marketplace comes up with nothing when the app attempts to load it.
Either Adobe’s or Verizon’s (or perhaps even Google’s) servers were having issues this morning, or I suspect this is evidence of a very early roll-out where one of the three companies was not entirely prepared.
The Adobe Flash Showcase for Android and Mobile Devices.
Luckily, a nice Twitterer offered the official Flash binary up for download on his Dropbox site for me to test it out. I expect either Adobe, Verizon or Google to resolve the server issues today or tomorrow, however.
[UPDATE: Apparently, you can manually install the Droid Froyo update if it hasn't been pushed to you yet. Click on this link for instructions.]
Has your Droid been Froyoed yet? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
