T-Mobile, Verizon set to offer Android-based Motorola phones this year
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 22nd 2009 4:41PM
posted June 22nd 2009 4:41PM
Details are still a little light on this one, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that both T-Mobile and Verizon will be offering Android-based phones from Motorola before the end of the year, according to "people familiar with the matter." While the Verizon phone is still a bit iffy, the T-Mobile offering seems to almost certainly be the Motorola Morrision which, as you can see above, is already pretty well acquainted with T-Mo branding. According to one of those people familiar with the matter, Verizon's Moto phone will have "similar hardware to the T-Mobile one," including a touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard, which doesn't exactly rule out Motorola's rumored Calgary slider, even if "similar" isn't the first word that springs to mind when discussing the two.
[Via Electronista]
[Via Electronista]
Leave it to VZW to pick a Motorola handset as their first Android phone......
Their fail knows no limits.
Wonder if they'll remove WiFi and cripple the GPS too.
Why must you guys be so judgemental? You haven't even seen it yet. Who knows? It might be better than expected. Although I do agree that Verizon will most likely lock it down.
I'll admit I'm judging the phone before anyone has seen/used it, but Motorola's past performance in this category leaves a LOT to be desired.
Sorry but HTC is the better option here, at least compared to what Motorola's putting out.
And yes they'll lock it down/cripple it but software limitations are much easier to overcome than bad hardware.
Oh, wow! WinMo killer.
"Sorry but HTC is the better option here, at least compared to what Motorola's putting out."
Hm, that's doubtful, seeing as how HTC keeps turning out phones with no headphone jacks. Not exactly smart.
That said, this MOT offering looks like a shower radio. Sad.
@munchies
i know this is months late, but hey look, the droid isnt a fail
Why does Verizon continue to get the worst phones...EVER?
Coming from the person who named their account after the Motorola KRZR.
"Verizon's Moto phone will have "similar hardware to the T-Mobile one".
Yea, for Verizon, that's where similarity ends. "and loaded with software 'enhancements' by Verizon to 'improve' the user experience with their first Android phone on Verizon".
they piss me off so much. damn there ridiculously good service.
i really wish verizon didn't cripple all their damn phones!
Until people start moving away from Verizon, because they cripple their phones, they will keep crippling them.
@HereAndNow I'm sure Verizon misses my $150/month now that I'm part of the iClone army. The iPhone had to have put a small dent in Verizon's revenue. Not only did it take customers away, but those customers are some of the highest paying ones, i.e. $30/data plan.
Well, Verizon does have the best network, IMO.
"Verizon" and "open" don't exactly go together in the same sentence if the word "not" isn't included.
+1
"T-Mobile, Verizon set to offer Android-based (YEEESSS!!!) Motorola phones (NOOOOOOOOO!!!) this year"
Its people like you I hate the most. Just because Moto has had a bad history recently doesn't mean its going to be a failure. Look at Palm. I'm sure a lot of people thought their flagship phone was going to be a colossal failure, but when the Pre came out, all of a sudden tech bloggers started becoming palm Fanb0is. Give the damn thing a chance before you start bashing. I'm not trying to sound like a defenseive MotoFan, but it irritates me I see anything bashed like this.
Is anyone else interested to see how much Verizon totally f*cks up Android?
Very interested. I ditched Verizon for T-mobile just because T-Mo has better phones.
Let's see how much Verizon can screw up Android by adding a bunch of crap VZ programs to clog up the OS.
I ditched VZW after 9 years because of continually poor phones, so yeah, I'll be amused to see how they screw it up too.
They are so f'ing clueless as to what people like.
-Taylor
Not me. I've been on Verizon for about six years now and when my contract is up in September, I'm gone for good. They're a bad joke disguised as a phone company.
ugh again no sprint android phone!!! i heard the jasper was an android phone, but the fact that it wasn't in the sprint roadmap leads me to believe sprint wont release it this year :(
and i though sprint was more open than verizon, but now verizon seems to be catching up
Sprint wants the focus to be on the Pre at the moment vs. Verizon not really having an answer. This is why Sprint has been really quiet about their line up for the rest of the year vs. Verizon's leaky "Oh we'll get the Pre, and oh yea the BB Tour, oh and how about some Android...it's all coming to you soon!"
I'm SURE with Sprint being one of the long standing members of the OHA that they have been working on 1 or more Android handsets and will reveal them when the time is right.
like many people i was intrigued by the whole Android idea, but after a year of it on the market it seems pretty obvious its not gaining any traction and likely won't any time soon even with a 1.5 version and nicer hardware. there's something about android based phones that has people putting them back down as fast as they picked them up when browsing in the stores.
Unfortunately it seems the Pre has all the inertia that Android was *supposed* to have as far as the promise of an open device to do interesting things on.
We'll see what happens but in 6-12 more months people will still care as little about android as they do today.
There are 18-20 Android phones due to drop this year. That's not momentum?
As far as I can see, the problem is that so far there are only two android phones. The HTC Dream looks shit, and the Magic only marginally better. This Motorolla phone looks ugly too. Hopefully the Samsung i7500 will turn out to be decent - it's the only Android phone I've seen that doesn't look like a toy.
Another problem I expect is that the UI doesn't look very responsive. For example when you rotate the Magic it uses that cheese zooming effect to hide the fact that resizing the UI takes so long! For phones with this amount of power you expect something better. I think this is mainly due to their poor choice of Java and lack of a JIT. See here: http://www.koushikdutta.com/2009/01/dalvik-vs-mono.html
You are clearly not watching what is going on with Android around the world.You won't have to wait much longer, to see just how much people care about Android.
It has been less than a year still, and by the time we hit the one year mark there will be a few more phones out.
And my G1 is amazing. After years with windows mobile and then the iPhone, I love my G1 more than any other phone i have ever had.
I can't wait to see what comes out next. My only complaint is my G1 is unlocked and running on AT&T, so I don't get 3G, but I will be jumping on anything from HTC and ATT if it's good!
-Taylor
looks promising
I like T-Mobile & they really seem to be establishing themselves as the "premier" Android operator, but it will still be nice when Android smartphones are available on other carriers, as well. This "having to change service providers to get a specific phone" thing is getting a bit old.
And we'll wait and see.
The only phones i have had on verizon that weren't ruined by the verizon OS tweaks were phones that were ruined before they hit the market. I really hope this isn't just more of the same garbage verizon has been giving us. Its high time we get something useful from them.
i'll say one thing, before i buy an android based phone, it needs to lose the bulky sidekick looking design that every twelve year old is running around with twittering and texting on.
VZW carries well tested, dependable phones that were state of the art before they spent 2 to 3 years figuring out how lock them down. Their engineers are very slow (in every sense of the word). I really wish the other carriers would improved their network coverage to compete with VZW.
Android: +1
Motorola: -5
I was kinda forced into verizon myself, but they really don't have many great phones, at&t has iphone and such, sprint has the first android and the pre for awhile, best verizon has is the htc pro/diamond
They have the Samsung Omnia which is great on paper but when you start using it, quickly you find it slow and unresponsive. The only phone they have left that might be worth a spit is the Samsung Saga but even that is iffy at best. I hope they get the new line of Omina's though. 800mgz process should speed them up a good bit compared to the old one.
To add my two cents; this phone doesn't look that bad for a teenager phone; and to defend the g1, i could never have another type of phone. I love the OS, yes it can be laggy but only if you have all the features turned, and second ithink the g1 looks great compared to any other phone. Yeah its not for everyone but neither is the iphone, i think that looks like a chrome brick with a shiny screen(worthless). And yo set the record straight iphone= 1 phone... Android=2 phones and counting
what ever happen to limo foundation and VZW? or wtf happen to limo foundation?
All the LIMO implementations were really bad and consumers weren't interested.
Verizon will spend 2 years making the fonts ugly and the software colors red and white.
Oh, and they will disable all the best features of the phone.
Great network, dumb engineers.
If this phone is -$99 it will be a hit. It will also overtake the sidekick as the phone of choice for middle/highschool hoodlums.
Yay
What the hell? Where'd the rest of my comment go?
Anyways, I think Verizon will prolly strip it like everything else. Why must they do that all the time? :(
"Calgary" slider? what a weird pick for a name.
*lives in Calgary*
If Calgary comes out, its going to do very very well on whatever network it pops up on. All due respect, HTC build quality just isn't the same as what Moto puts out, ask your mom, ask your dad, ask your technician. Their designs have fallen off lately, but they are due for a comeback. And haven't you heard? We're in a recession, buy American!
I agree, moto designs have been poor lately but the companies history proves that they can make very very sturdy phones, better than htc and even LG (look at any enV product that is more than 1 year old, they completely fall apart). Most of the complaints ive heard have revolved around the ui, and hopefully android can turn that around. Fix the UI and make phones like they used to and this could easily be a very nice phone. Too many haters on this site.
It occurs to me that Verizon is the Apple of the cellular world. Their network "just works", but it's locked down tight. Also, you pay a premium for the service and any add-ons. They're also following the Apple plan of touting hardware that everyone knows is second-rate, though they're beginning to realize that this is futile and will get better stuff, as Apple did when they switched to Intel.
But i'm a windows guy, which might make me switch from big red to Att just out of principle.
There are a few things that give me hope for Android on Verizon:
-Verizon has actually started releasing firmware that unlocks the GPS on some phones
-to truly lock down Android would require OS level changes which will require them to take a branch of the OS and heavily modify it. I wouldn't think their changes would be allowed back into the Android code base so no "easy" OS upgrades/bug fixes. Verizon would be in the business of maintaining their own version of Android. It's a little much for one person (see next point). I guess they could try to push this off on Motorola but I don't think Motorola can afford to take this on.
-Verizon had a job opening for one Android developer and that job seemed to be targeted towards writing an app to tie into Verizon's voice mail.
-Jason made a great point: we can overcome a screwed up Android build. Once the CDMA code is working in Android, we should be able to just load the latest build. (I think the CDMA code was finished in January but I'm not sure it made it into cupcake, it should be in doughnut)
Now release dates...I've seen one post that contained an email supposedly from Motorola customer support saying the Calgary was in the final stages before production and it would be released "in the next month or two". The email was dated June 1st, 2009, so may in July? (I can supply a link it anyone want to ready it.)