The Droid community heard
news of this update all the way back in January. "A limited number of owners will receive the update as part of a pre-launch 'soak' test before it’s more widely released. This has become standard practice, so we can observe for a few days to make sure there are no hidden problems before wide release", Matt stated, manager of the
Motorola Owners Forum. As you may have seen,
MyDroidWorld leaked this "test" update before it was officially released OTA (over the air) giving us a glimpse of what it may bring. For those who flashed the leaked "test" update or were included in the
pre-launch OTA, you will still be notified to receive the official "release" FRG83G now that all bugs have been worked out. The official "release" OTA started on March 9th and will update your Droid to Android 2.2.2. As noted by Verizon Wireless Droid support
.pdf, this update will fix some mms/sms issues users were reporting.
So why care about this update when you have
GPA ROMs to enjoy? Unfortunately not every file on the Droid can be built from source. Because of this, "proprietary" files are used. These files are pulled directly from your device so it is very important to have the latest ones available, in this case FRG83G. Although the release notes for this update state that only mms/sms issues were addressed, the official OTA
.zip shows much more being patched. Rather than contemplating for hours about what has or has not been changed from one release to another, I would much rather just be certain and include the latest proprietaries in my ROMs. That being said, expect them in GPA14.
"Pete you're slacking, you should have had these FRG83G ROMs in your
downloads section the night of March 9th." I know, I know...For some reason this update has been very hard to get. I sure do miss the days when people were eager to post the Droid 1 OTA files or download urls taken from logcats. I put my development Droid back to stock using RSDLite and an sbf file but I still could not get it to receive the update. Usually, and even stated in
official documents, you can "force" the update by going to Settings > About phone > System updates, but this did not work. Fortunately, Twitter followers
Jonassink and
DizkoDan wanted to help. After spending some time on Gtalk with each, I was able to guide them through the process required to get the system and OTA files dumped. I then took these files and created stock rooted ROMs out of them, one odexed and the other deodexed.
Before posting the download links for this update, I'd like to end on a lighter note. Check out the graphic of the Droid 1 in the update support
.pdf. What a major FAIL! For starters the Droid 1 has never ran Donut (Android 1.6) as shown on the screen. Also note the "Advanced Task Killer" application in the top left. Pretty funny stuff. I can count the hours of Photoshop experience I have on one hand and I know I could have made a better graphic!
Download:
FRG83G Deodexed
FRG83G Odexed
FRG83G OTA file
Edit: For those wanting to stop OTA notifications you will need to edit your build.prop file with the following...
ro.build.description=voles-user 2.2.2 FRG83G 91102 release-keys
ro.build.fingerprint=verizon/voles/sholes/sholes:2.2.2/FRG83G/91102:user/release-keys