Motorola plans to upgrade the CLIQ to Android 2.1 this Q2, which means time is running out on the self-imposed deadline. Hopefully Motorola will release some more details soon, but now users who are willing to hack their device have another option.
A group of ROM developers over at ModMyMobile have been able to build Android 2.1 from source and released an alpha version known as Eclair2CLIQ. The ROM is still in development (so only experienced users should explore it at this point), but it’s still exciting to learn that devs got a stock version of Android working on the CLIQ.
Android is open source so I’m not surprised by this development, but Motorola’s Android phones have traditionally been harder to hack than their HTC counterparts. Securing the software on their handsets, thereby preventing a non-Motorola ROM image from being loaded, has been the common practice for many years and Motorola even suggested that users interested in re-flashing their phone buy an HTC model like the Nexus One.