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Motorola gives up on Android 2.x for the Cliq XT

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A little over a year ago, T-Mobile had an Android hit on its hands in the form of the Motorola Cliq XT, an Android phone with a slide-out QWERTY keypad, 3.1-inch display, five megapixel camera, microSD removable storage, along with 3G and Wi-Fi data capabilities. Although the device was overshadowed by the Motorola Droid, many Android early adopters got their start on the Cliq XT, which also features Motorola’s Motoblur custom front-end on the Android operating system.

However, while Motorola has been working on Android upgrades for other members of its mobile phone line, the company seems to have officially given up on advancing the Motorola Cliq XT anywhere beyond Android 1.5.

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“Our product team members worked for months to attempt to create a version of Android 2.1 that would perform well on the Cliq XT,” a Motorola representative wrote in the company’s support forums. “They gave it everything they had. We even took the unprecedented step of investigating the benefits of code provided by the independent developer community to try to improve XT performance. In the end, we were not able to develop a version of Android 2.1 for CLIQ XT that would deliver an optimal customer experience.”

The Cliq XT joins a number of Motorola Android devices that will not make the jump above Android 1.x: also in the heap, the Devour A555 (stuck at Android 1.6) and the Motorola i1 (stuck at Android 1.5). Numerous other models sold in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Canada will also not be upgraded to Android 2.x.

Motorola has also announced that the Motorola Charm, Flipout, and Milestone models will remain on Android 2.1, with no upgrades planned to Android 2.2 or higher.

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Geoff Duncan
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