This year’s mobile world congress is getting more exciting with each day that passes.

All predictions are that it will be Android’s time to shine- and looks like Motorola will be lending a little extra sparkle to the party. It seems Moto is getting ready to lift the lid on the next major update of their excellent MOTOBLUR customization.

Recently an official forum post has promised users a UK release of the motoblur 1.3.20 update within the next two weeks. ( before end of Feb 2010)
Excitingly the post promotes this as being a MAJOR upgrade and we hope to see a slew of new features and fixes.  Sadly the post continues to say that this will not be the recently announced Android 2.1 update which has been timeframed at an agonising “before the middle of June” for UK shores.

I applaud Motorola for their communication skills with their customers and keeping customers in the loop with updates for the phone.  Obviously, they can’t share everything in their road map for competitive reasons, however informing and having a conversation with your customers, where possible, is exactly what this social revolution is about.  Pretty great service from a company that is offering a “Social Handset” – Great job, and I hope other handset companies adopt this same practice.

At the moment the customizations and featured offered by Motoblur ( available in the UK on the Motorola DEXT) coupled with great hardware creates a powerful phone, which has drawn a lot of praise since its launch.  Despite the phone still running on Android 1.5, some of the features offered by Motoblur vastly exceed what is offered on the latest and greatest android 2.1 release. In particular, a unified mailbox for all your facebook, texts, twitter and other messages, much stronger backup and security features like remote wipe.

When the phone was released, it was way ahead of its time.  I am hoping that the last few months development are going to pay off some great new features. I am holding thumbs for at least an update to 1.6 so that DEXT owners will be able to experience the new gen of showcase android apps like Google Goggles, Maps 4.0 etc.

Motorola’s star is definitely rising and the companies who take up the challenge of offering something unique and powerful to users will end up winners in this game.

Please don’t disappoint us Motorola!

Here’s an extract of the post

Software – currently 98% of all DEXT users in the UK are on Blur Version 1.1.14. This is the second maintenance release (MOL) we have provided over the air since launch and it includes enhancements and bug fixes. Within the next two weeks we will release Blur Version 1.3.20 which is a major upgrade and will provide more enhancements and new features.
As far as the 2.1 (Éclair) upgrade for DEXT is concerned we have not yet confirmed when this will be available for European customers. The plan is to follow the US roll out as they are the lead region and to have it available before the middle of the year. I cant say any more on this but will promise to let you all know when this will be happening.

If you want to see a video of the Dext – look at Connor from Orange‘s demo below- its excellent

Related posts:

1. Motorola Xoom Update to Honeycomb 3.2 out in UK!
2. Sony Xperia Arc update 2.3.4 is rolling in UK