Motorola Droid Owners Can Manually Install Android OS 2.1

Motorola and Verizon have begun sending out a significant upgrade for the system software on the Motorola Droid, but so far only a few thousand people have received it. Those who are impatient can now update their smartphone manually.

However, this method is not authorized by either Verizon or Motorola. The cautious can wait a couple of days, and Android OS 2.1 will be sent to their phone when it can be installed in the approved manner.

Installation Instructions
Those who are interested in doing the unauthorized update should do the following:

• Make sure their Droid has at least a half battery charge before starting this process
• Download the system software update
• Rename the file to "update.zip"
• Put it in the root directory of the microSD card
• Turn off the Droid
• Turn the Droid back on while holding down the ‘X' key on the physical keyboard
• The smartphone will boot in recovery mode, indicated by an image of a triangle with a exclamation point appearing on the screen
• Either press the volume up key and camera button key OR press only the camera key down halfway
• This will bring up an on-screen menu. User the directional pad to move to and select "apply update.zip"
• The update process will begin, and take several minutes.
• When it is finished and the on-screen menu appears again, choose "Reboot"
• When the Droid starts again, it will be running Android OS 2.1

What's New in Android OS 2.1?
The latest version of Google's smartphone operating system, Android OS 2.1, offers much greater support for speech-to-text, allowing users to enter text into any application with just their voice.

In addition, the multi-touch gesture pinch-to-zoom has been added to the web browser and photo viewer. Android 2.0 has support for multi-touch, but Google did not include gestures like pinch-to-zoom into the bundled applications.

The version of OS 2.1 for the Droid includes the enhanced weather and news widgets that debuted with Android OS 2.1, and Google Goggles has been bundled as well.

It also offers a fix for the bug that lets users bypass the security log-in, and also bring longer battery life.