some motorola droid’s receiving new ota update

as i was browsing a few of the motorola droid forums last night, i noticed a few posts with people wondering what the update they had just received was.  of course, most of us flipped, hoping it was the android 2.1 update!  it appears that it wasn’t.  the few people that have come forth with the update are not experiencing anything different with their phones.

the update coming to some phones was reportedly about 61MB which is pretty significant in size.  here is the system info after installing:

Model Number: Droid
Firmware Version: 2.0.1
Baseband Version: C_01.3E.01P
Kernel Version: 2.6.29-omap1-g0dd7e0b
                            android-build@apa26 #511
Build Number: ESD56

i find this semi-weird as it’s the same build as is on my phone which was updated back in december.

many are speculating that this was just to fix certain handsets that have been unable to update their facebook applications.  users with this new update can now download the facebook update from the market without having installation issues.

now, i don’t know about you, but 61MB seems a little big for such a minor fix.  was this just a preparation sort of update for 2.1?  maybe a patch just waiting for the 2.1 update?  maybe.

update 4:05: the crew at droidforums.net has been given some details through their sources…

Our sources have indicated Android 2.1 has passed all internal testing on the Droid and a target is to have all Droids updated before the end of the month. This patch had added some minor fixes and preps the phone for a smooth Android 2.1 RELEASE. To be clear, the forthcoming immediate update is not 2.1, but a precursor to smooth the transition to 2.1 which will follow within the next couple of weeks. Stay Tuned, more details to come!

the rumor mill has our android 2.1 update set for 1/22 or 3 days from now.  we’ll keep you posted as we have more.