We haven’t posted a DROID commercial in a while, but a new clip for the RAZR MAXX HD surfaced this morning looking more like the original DROID campaign than anything we have seen in some time, and thought we’d share. Plus, anything is better than the desert bedroom explosion spot, right? Not sure this fully redeems the DROID brand after that ridiculousness, but it can’t hurt.

In this spot, instead of selling the new powerful Google Voice Search, Verizon has decided to brand it with their own term called, “DROID recognition.” Yes, that’s a silly word play on the phrase “voice recognition.” Come on, we should be able to do better than this.

At the end of last week, Verizon approved a new update of build 9.16.6 for the DROID RAZR HD. That update is slowly trickling out to users now, but if you’d like to manually upgrade this minute, you can do so with the update file below. In order to update with these instructions, you’ll need to be 100% stock. I’d bet that you can keep root by using Voodoo Rootkeeper, however, I was not able to test it.

The update improves connectivity, camera, video streaming, and more. The file is roughly 96MB in size, jumps your phone to Android 4.1.2 and works on the RAZR MAXX HD as well. 

Yesterday afternoon, in response to a question about the HTC One’s availability on Verizon, the official HTC USA account essentially shot down any chance at the device arriving in the near future. This news comes on the heals of a report out of AllThingsD, which suggested that there would be a Verizon HTC One after all, but that it wouldn’t be for a couple of months as Big Red needs to finish up their extensive testing on it. A day after that report, we also caught wind from a source out of Walmart, who gave us a document showing that the big box retailer was expecting an HTC One variant to arrive this month that would replace the DROID DNA. We remained skeptical at the time, and you can see why. 

A new update has been approved by Verizon for the Motorola DROID RAZR HD. Once updated, the phone will be running build 9.16.6. The update introduces a security fix (be careful rooted users), but improves WiFi connectivity, camera, in-call audio, video streaming, and media sync. 

Remember how disappointed you were the day that HTC announced the One and that the only major carrier across the globe that had decided to pass on it was Verizon? Thankfully, your disappointment may be short-lived, as reports yesterday suggested that Big Red would indeed carry a variant of the One, but that it would arrive later after it passed through testing. Or will it arrive right on time?

The official DROID RAZR and RAZR MAXX Jelly Bean update is pushing out to devices now. For those who didn’t manually update with our step-by-step instructions, feel free to head into Settings>About phone>System updates to see if you can pull it. A number of readers were able to early this morning, so give it a shot.

The full changelogs for the update can be found here and here.

The update should be 338MB in size if you are coming from Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich). If you are running the accidental build from X-mas, the update will be around 38MB in size. Once updated, you’ll be running Android 4.1.2

Cheers Scott, Daniel, Max, and JoeFro!

The Motorola DROID RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD are no longer new by smartphone standards, having been released back in October of last year. So typically when a phone has been on the market for five or six months, we start to see the price drop across the web. 

Back in early February, we caught wind of a new HTC device that appeared to be headed to Verizon under the codename “DLXPLUS.” For those not familiar with the naming convention, think of the DROID DNA as the “DLX.” At first, we were hoping that this would be Big Red’s version of the HTC One because the purported specs matched up exactly, but since we know now that the device is landing everywhere but there, we’ll assume this phone must be something somewhat different. Will it be the DROID DNA+ or perhaps the DROID ONE (not likely “One”)?