The Droid Turbo is exclusive to Verizon, a carrier that doesn’t have a track record for delivering software updates swiftly, which is why the handset is still running Android 4.4 KitKat. Verizon has already released the Lollipop update for Moto X 2014, the update came out in November, and even the de-branded Moto Maxx jumped on Lollipop a couple of months ago. Droid Turbo owners on Verizon are still waiting for a taste of Lollipop. A Motorola engineer has said that this smartphone will jump straight from KikKat to Lollipop 5.1.
Luciano Carvalho, a software engineer at Motorola, let it slip on Google+ that the Verizon Droid Turbo will be updated to Android 5.1 Lollipop straight from KitKat.
So not only will users get everything that Lollipop has to offer but they will also get the bug fixes and overall system improvements that are part and parcel of Android 5.1. Looks like the extra wait paid off.
Carvalho’s explanation makes it seem like this decision was taken to take advantage of native Voice over LTE support in Android 5.1. He points out that porting all VoLTE changes to Android 5.0 and then switching to AOSP solution in Android 5.1 would have been a huge waste of resources, hence the direct jump to version 5.1.
Unfortunately Carvalho has not revealed when the update will arrive for the Droid Turbo. We’ll keep our ears to the ground for this information.
Filed in . Read more about Android 5.1, Droid Turbo and Verizon.