Android 2.2 Now Available For Motorola Droid X

Verizon Wireless on Tuesday said that it would make Android 2.2 available to the Motorola Droid X starting Wednesday, September 22. Android 2.2 Froyo of course offers a raft of new features and will surely make the Droid X an even better phone than it already is.

Android 2.2 is especially good news for the enterprise. Android 2.1 is not recommended by Gartner for businesses, as it still lacks several vital security features. Android 2.2 solves most of the security problems inherent in Android 2.1, and Gartner's Ken Dulaney has given it a tentative thumbs up for enterprise use.

There are several primary reasons why Android 2.2 is a vital upgrade for any mobile professional and/or business that plans to deploy Android handsets. Android 2.2 has a device policy manager. Google says the new device policy management APIs allow developers to write "device administrator" applications that can control security features of the device.

Android 2.2 really ramps up security with much better password support. Exchange administrators can enforce password policies, which now include numeric pin or alpha-numeric password options to unlock the device. Remote wipe is the other big one. Exchange administrators can remotely reset the device to factory defaults to secure data in case the device is lost or stolen.

Those are the big ones for IT admins to be concerned with. There are also some user-facing changes that will fall into the "thank goodness they finally did that" category. For example, Exchange Calendars are now supported, which syncs enterprise calendar data with the devices. Android 2.2 also adds global address lists. This means users can search through their corporate directory from within the handset's e-mail application.

Historically, Verizon Wireless has sent Android updates out to a small sub-set of users to test the delivery process. This time around, Verizon is making the update to everyone using the Droid X. Rather than wait for an update alert, users can simply go to Menu > Settings > About Phone > System Updates to manually grab the update.

The full changelog is available from Verizon here.