We knew
good and well this thing was coming sometime in November, and now Verizon Wireless has made it official: the Motorola DROID will hit Big Red on November 6th for $199 on contract (after a $100 mail-in rebate). Naturally, the
DROID itself is just the first of what
could be many Android-laced phones coming to the carrier, and Verizon Wireless CMO John Stratton even stated that the phone "is wide open" -- pretty big words from a company like VZW. Android 2.0 will be front and center, along with Visual Voicemail, a 3.7-inch display (854 x 480 resolution), 5 megapixel camera (with dual-LED flash), a bundled 16GB memory card and a beta version of
Google Maps Navigation(!). For those wondering, yeah -- the DROID is the first phone to offer that, which transforms Google Maps into a turn-by-turn routing system that'll have your dedicated TomTom / Garmin trembling in fear. There's also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, WiFi, voice-activated search and over-the-air Amazon MP3 downloads. With all that, who needs the iPhone,
right Ivan?
Update: Check on our
in-depth hands-on coverage on the DROID, Google Maps Navigation and the accessory dock!
posted Oct 28th 2009 10:23AM
Gimme!
man im really considering switching to verizon. i wonder how much its going to be per month for this phone?
Yes, it's this year's must have Christmas device! You hear that Santa?
Santa is using the Droid on Verizon so, HE CAN HEAR YOU NOW! Good!
OMG WANT!!!!!
Everything was so slick and quick. This thing seriously pwns for multi-tasking and widget support. I like that a task-manager pops up when you hold down one of the physical buttons on the front, etc. GOOD STUFF, MOTO!
Any word on VZW's plan pricing? Is it the same as their other smartphones?
Apple and MS should be shakin' in their boots, right about now. GOOGLE IS SKYNET!
This is from the press release:
"· To get the most from DROID by Motorola smartphone, customers will need to subscribe to a Nationwide voice plan and an Email and Web for Smartphone plan. Nationwide voice plans begin at $39.99 for monthly access for 450 minutes and an Email and Web for Smartphone plan is $29.99 for monthly access."
Motorola, Verizon & Google 24 months ago: "Hey, everyone on Engadget is complaining about the virtual keyboard. That's our big opportunity!"
Motorola, Verizon & Google 24 months later: "Hey everybody, check out the Droid – with a physical keyboard!"
Everyone other than open source brokesters on Engadet: "Where's the touchscreen with multi-touch?"
Apple: "Stupid robot."
Mine when it comes in europe !
(i was almost tempted by a n900)
great stuff moto & google
iPhone is now officially out-of-date. Palm Pre takes the UI crown, and Droid takes functionality.
"Oh, bubububu we have 80,000 lame apps!" BOO!
Oh physical keyboard how I've missed you... I must check one of these out ASAP.
Gimme us more! :D
I think many of Us can't wait till that November 6 finally arrived! It will be for us to decide now finally
See the official hi-res pictures released by motorola + some goodies and a detailed review: http://pinoytutorial.com/techtorial/motorola-droid-official-release-on-november-6-for-199-with-contract/
"To kill or be Killed by Droid" that's the motto!"
THIS PHONE WITH GOOGLE/ANDROID/VERIZON WIRELESS IS GOING TO TEABAG THE INDUSTRY!!! LOL!!!
MUSTTTTTTTTTT, HAVVVVVEEEEEE, PHONNNNNNNEEE,..... DROIIIIIIDDDDDDDD.
DOES ANYBODY KNOW IF THIS WILL BE ABLE TO WORK ON PAGE PLUS CELLULAR?? http://www.pagepluscellular.com/
IF IT DOES IM BUYING THIS UNLOCKED AND GETTING THE 1200 TXTS/ 1200 MINS WITH 50 MB DATA FOR $29.95. Verizon's post paid costs a bit too much in the pocket.
Do want, I just really wish it didn't an physical keyboard.
Seeing as it's round the same thickness of an iPhone 3GS...I'm sure you could get it and never use the keyboard.
Very true, but I've dealt with enough hardware qwerty's to know that in general, they suck. Plus, if you need SIP for portrait text input, why even have a keyboard on the device at all? I've always struggled with this on all my landscape qwerty sliders. Plus if you're gonna do a hardware keyboard, HTC has it right with the Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2. After having a dedicated row of numbers, not having one is a potential deal-breaker.
There should be a number of Android 2.0 based handset with comparative specs, minus the physical keyboard, coming pretty soon. If rumors are to be believed.
Luckily you'll have the choice.
Yeah I understand.
Well my purchase won't be til Feb 2010.
So It's going to be between this or the rumored X3. And the X3 will have all this plus a faster processor. With no keyboard. Your options are coming, lol.
Yeah the key with me is going to be thinness, no hardware keyboard and screen resolution. These 480x320 and 480x360 devices aren't cutting it when I've had a VGA device for the past year. It really is painful to go down in resolution, and is probably the biggest reason I have cold feet about an iPhone or Android device.
You dont have enough experience with anything to know anything....shut up and keep your isuck.
To each their own i guess. There are some bad QWERTY keyboards out there but its 32251325 times faster to type on a keyboard for me then it is with touch screen. Also for gaming its a must for me. Its part of the reason why i would never own a Iphone. A phone with a full keyboard (4-5row) and a Dpad mounted on the left for me is heaven. And like the guy above me said its thin enough to where if you didnt want to use it you dont.
@bifikus
Did you even read his posts (especially the last one)? Is your iHate so strong that it clouds your judgement, or are you just an iTard?
tard....
I'm thinking that physical keyboard would come in handy. I dig using my iPod Touch around the house for browsing the net and playing around, but it ain't that great for actually getting work done. When I see my buddy make MULTIPLE typing mistakes trying to bang out an email on the iPhone (like he used to on his old Blackberry), I know I just gotta have that physical keyboard. It seems quite a few people who salivate over the all-touch devices have never actually utilized one for any real-world applications.
Yeah.
All I know...is unless the X3 comes onto T-Mobile...my next service provider will be Verizon. What with them getting the Dragon and Droid. I will be all on it.
I can't wait til I get in and out of basic. =]
Wanna get this phone alredy
@ jamesbriano man its like you read my mind. full touch definitely isnt ideal for "real-world applications" especially for business use when accuracy is a must.
It's a legitimate point, but it's great that the droid gives you a choice. It's not automatic that you'll be faster on a physical keyboard, it just depends on what you can get good at and the technique that you prefer. I know myself and many others who use the iphone for business use all the time, and I find myself being more faster and more accurate on the virtual keyboard than on a blackberry.
For example, in portrait mode, the keys are closer together, but i use my left hand to hold the phone and three or sometimes four fingers in my right hand to type. It actually helps that the keys are closer to each other cause your fingers have to move a much lesser distance than using thumbs in landscape mode. But, I'm sure this will work out less well for you if your fingers are really fat and stubby. All in all, speed depends on the technique and the person.
Did they actually confirm the Google Navigator would be on there?
It's in the press release
Wow, impressive. Hopefully this new Verizon lasts!
One more thing. To all those that hate on the iPhone, none of this would have happened without it. Just keep that in mind the next time you blindly bash it.
holy shit, verizon allowing a 3rd party free turn by turn direction service, whats next, OS X on AMD, Herpes on a monkey.....wtf verizon, keep this up
oh and google bring this to the blackberry tour puhlease!
Unless the iphone was released in the mid 90s, Apple does not get credit for the availability of smartphones. That title goes to Nokia, and to a lesser extent Ericsson, as they were the actual pioneers of the field.
Then the crown for the rise in smartphone popularity arguably goes to a combination of Nokia and RIM.
I'm just failing to see how the smartphone market would have been affected if an arm chip had never been branded with a bitten piece of fruit.
@atriq: Really?
Do you think WebOS or Android would exist and be as good as they are without the iPhone? Do you think Verizon would be willing to open up their network if AT&T were not adding more subs due to the iPhone? Do you think WinMo 7 would be worth a damn or even coming out in the next 2 years without the iPhone? Or that the smartphone market would be growing at this pace without the iPhone? Give me a break! Turn off the blind fanboism and realize that the smartphone industry was stagnate until the iPhone was announced and released. Since then HTC, Palm, Blackberry, Microsoft, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mo, Motorola, etc, have all stepped up and produced outstanding hardware, software, and consumer-oriented plans and services. Without the iPhone we likely would not have nearly the choice and quality in the smartphone market we do today. I'm not saying it is the best phone in the world or that it is the end all be all, but it most certainly was the catalyst for the current market we have.
Before we go using phrases like it "transforms Google Maps into a turn-by-turn routing system that'll have your dedicated TomTom / Garmin trembling in fear", could we read a review of this routing system first?
Garmin's got a pretty solid product. And I can use it ALMOST anywhere. I don't need cell phone coverage - just satellites. Can a Droid do that?
@NHAnimator:
The Droid has GPS and a compass.
With Google Navigator most likely; coming to Blackberry's soon it would be stupid not to. I think Verizon's new gameplan is to let the smartphone users do whatever they want and milk the users that opt out of getting a smartphone.
@ Jasmine
GPS and compass don't mean much if the maps are online only and you're in an area with zero cell coverage.....
It looks boring and it is made my Motorola...what more do I have to say?
What are you trying to say? I don't get it...
i can't even SEE what he's saying...
Man I agree, I have had some horrible experience with Motorola phones and their customer services sucks. The definitely to me isnt a very attractive phone. Motorola is going to have to release for few more phones of high quality before i get back in bed with them. Last great phone from them for me was the StarTac.
Something about someone doing his Motorola... dude keep that stuff private...
That's odd. Because last Motorola I had was the Motorola Q 9h Global. I never had one problem. It worked like a charm. Camera was beautiful. Dropped it plenty of times...stayed intact and working.
I don't get the gripe with many of Motorola's phones.
I think your going to have to say a little more than that... this thing is amazing!
@ iDavey
Agreed. The Q9H was a great phone, especially for a wm standard device. So Motorola got something right in recent times, and the Droid looks just as good.
@ tikiteko = tool
@ iDavey well you happen to be one of the lucky few to havent experienced bad motorola products. Seeing that Motorola has been on a steady decline for the past decade other then a few revenue spikes through out the years. As well the horrible reviews from countless sources on their product line and this move being their big push to save their company seems to say different then what you are saying.
Actually...the Moto Q Global was not reviewed badly. It was marked as a nice, sturdy phone albeit having a poor battery, but they provided everyone with a bigger one. So eh.
Only reason most their phone were reviewed badly because they kept milking the RAZR line...just like Sidekick. They didn't know when to make something else.
But if we ARE going by reviews then...every single review has placed this at high level build quality and wonderful software.
So what's the excuse of bashing Motorola now?
Actually he is not the only one that thinks Motorola stinks. I have never liked a single Motorola phone i have ever used. Our company used to have AT&T with Motorola phones and everyone hated them, but we blamed AT&T's famously bad service for it. The whole company switched over to Verizon and gave us all the latest Motorola standard business model at the time and we all realized it wasn't AT&T that sucked before. So we traded to another higher priced Motorola model and finally Verizon took them all back and gave us LG phones and everyone was happy. At home my wife and I both went through several models of Motorola phones that we complained about off and on, but this last time we changed phone we went all Samsung (Omnia, Alias II and my son has one of those tiny music phone that rotates open) and we have never been so happy with our phones.
The Mot phones that were not designed to be loss leaders, and the ones that were not hamstrung by carriers (old Verizon) were great phones. In terms of robustness and signal integrity, the grade-school kids of Motorola engineers know more about cell phone design than Apple, RIM, or Palm put together. The place where Mot was weak was in software. That became VERY important in phones, hence Mot's problems. Hitching up to Android was the obvious move. I have an iPhone that I like, but this phone with Google Navigator has me very interested. If the battery life is decent, I'm there when my contract is up.
Google Maps Navigation !! That's a +