Over the last few years, Motorola’s reputation as an Android manufacturer has tanked. The company has failed to provide operating system updates, even for its flagship devices. The biggest issue for Motorola, however, has been its inability to follow through on promises it makes. The manufacturer has promised many device updates, only to never deliver them. This has caused many people, including yours truly, to vow to never purchase a Motorola phone again. But last year, a sliver of hope appeared when the company announced it was being acquired by Google. Speculation was rampant following the news. Would Motorola make the next Nexus? Would its devices be first to receive updates? Would all Motorola devices ship with stock Android?
Sadly, none of that panned out as we expected. Google did however name Punit Soni Motorola’s new VP of Product shortly after the acquisition took place. This put Soni in charge of the entire product development process, which as you can imagine, is a pretty stressful job. Soni says that every day he thinks about all the disappointment Motorola has caused, but can’t go back in time to fix. Punit does promise to fulfill every promise and commitment Motorola makes from here on out, though.
In the 5 months I have been on this, I dont go through one day when I dont feel the impact of past promises that were made and couldnt be met. I have said this before: I cannot fix the past. However, going forward, anything we launch, we will support. Any commitment we make, we will follow up.
In the same post a while back, Sonit responded to Motorola’s silence on Android 4.2 by saying that “it takes time to see what’s in there, work with hardware providers to ensure support from their end, figure out how it interacts with our current plans (we are still pushing 4.1), and then validate a real schedule, and finally publish it.” This obviously implies that, even though it is now owned by Google, Motorola is not getting any special treatment or early peaks at upcoming Android updates. As Android Police notes, this is something Google can’t do, as it would upset other manufacturers.
Whether or not Motorola follow’s through on its latest promise remains to be seen, but we sure hope they do. The company can make a pretty solid smartphone.
[Source: Google+]