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A little over a week ago we caught wind of the possibility that the Droid Bionic may be canceled which quickly gave way to the more palatable rumor that it was merely delayed with an eye to improve some of the specs. Motorola’s line was that based on feedback since CES they were going to be “incorporating several enhancements to make this (the Bionic) an even better consumer experience.”
Our friends at Droid Life listened to the Motorola earnings call yesterday afternoon and while Sanjay Jha didn’t reveal any specifics regarding what upgrades the Bionic we handled at CES will see, but he did offer up additional info pertaining to the delay as well as a nod to our favorite upgradeable to 4G Honeycomb tablet.
Jha confirmed that the Bionic we will see hit retail sometime this Summer is going to be borrowing from a future handset (Targa?) which has apparently been shelved in favor of putting all of Moto’s eggs in the Bionic basket this Summer. In short it looks like we went from two high profile Verizon device launches from Motorola in Q2/Q3 to one which depending on the device the Bionic has become may be fine with everybody. I don’t think anyone is particularly excited to see their new “best phone ever” outclassed within a matter of months, by the same manufacturer no less.
According to Jha the decision to make these spec enhancements to the Bionic came only after it became clear that the ship date was slipping anyway. Obviously this doesn’t quite gel with the story that it is being upgraded based on feedback, but we’ll have to let that go for the moment. What caused the initial delay? Not surprisingly the answer is LTE.
Jha admitted that both the Xoom 4G upgrade and the Bionic will be able to march out hand in hand when they can get the software to play nicely with LTE on them both. Whether that means that the Bionic should be expected near the projected May 26th 4G upgrade for the Xoom or if this instead points to the Xoom upgrade seeing a delay into the 3rd quarter is not known.
I’m glad to see Motorola doing something with a delayed product rather than just letting it rest on its laurels and launch it as is months late, but I do find it a bit strange that they are having such difficulties integrating LTE considering HTC and Samsung (well almost) have managed to get their offerings out the door already.
If you want to see the transcript of the Q&A’s you can hit up the source link below.
Related content:
Motorola Droid Bionic not canceled, but maybe delayed and improved
CES leftovers: Hands-on the Motorola Droid Bionic, headed to Verizon in Q2
Droid Bionic first impressions
Motorola Atrix 4G to launch by end of February, 3G Xoom by March, Bionic and LTE Xoom coming in Q2
Verizon’s spring roadmap has 8 Android phones releasing in less than 60 days

Fuente: Android and Me