Hasta La Gadget!

Again, we have no idea why Verizon is burying the launch of the HTC Droid Eris alongside the Motorola Droid tomorrow (well, apart from the slow CPU and older Android build) but if you had any doubts that Big Red was going to launch this riff on the Hero, well, these screenshots of the employee training course should put those to rest. Interestingly, the buttons and logo placement are slightly different from the pic that was leaked to gdgt, but this version certainly looks like what Eric Schmidt was holding the other day, so we’re thinking this is the final iteration. We’ll see what’s what tomorrow, we suppose.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones

Droid Eris turns up in Verizon training course originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is it: The official video laying out Android 2.0‘s new features, to go along with 2.0 support hitting the SDK today. Man, Android 2.0 is nice.

Highlights of Android 2.0 revealed in the video are a new contacts setup that’s reminiscent of the Hero’s integrated contacts—it pulls them in from multiple sources, supports two-way syncing to any backend and has an awesome new feature called Quick Contact that pulls up every possible way to ping somebody when you touch their icon. Quick Contact can be built into any app too.

Seriously, there’s all kinds of improvements: Searchable SMS, Exchange support, more in-depth camera controls, a better keyboard with full multitouch, a revamped browser with a better UI and HTML5 support, and it goes on.

On the hard spec side, there’s more capable Bluetooth with full 2.1 and new profiles and better support for multiple screen sizes, like WVGA (800×480) & FWVGA (854×480). Oh yeah, and interestingly, it’s Verizon Wireless that shows up in the video adding mild credence to some rumors that they might have a temporary window of exclusivity with the new OS. We’ll see, but it’s seems clear now they’re getting it first, at least. Either way, it’s hard not to be excited about it Android 2.0. [Android Developers, Thanks everybody!]

We’ve been hearing about a 1GHz Snapdragon-based Android handset called the HTC Dragon ever since the HD2 came out, but now it looks like some pieces are falling into place — apparently this mystery HTC set we spotted over the weekend is a CDMA version of the Dragon headed for Verizon as the HTC Passion sometime in Q4. Apparently Verizon’s trying to unify the hardware UI of its Droid lineup, which is why the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Eris, and the Passion share a set of buttons along the bottom edge of the screen, and some people are also claiming that the white notification bar is further sign of similarity. As for us, well, we’ll wait to hear more before we start to get too excited — and we can’t help but wonder if this thing will run Sense or stock Android 2.0 when it hits, as HTC’s big new ad push is all about personalization. Still, it’s looking like a hell of a year for Android (and Verizon), no?

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Dragon coming to Verizon as the Passion? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got some wild information from a trusted source about Verizon’s Android strategy, and let’s just say this shakes things up a little bit. Here are the big takeaways:

• Droid is the brand name being applied to Verizon’s Android devices. It isn’t a single phone.
• The Sholes — the phone we’ve been calling the Droid so far — may simply be known as the Droid.
• HTC’s Desire will be coming to market as the “Droid Eris.” (Allow us to save you the Wikipedia lookup — Eris is the Greek goddess of strife.) Interestingly, it’s already up on gdgt as such.
• Droid Eris will be released — not announced, actually released — on November 6. In all likelihood, it will not be announced or shown at Verizon’s October 28 event — that will probably just be for the Sholes.

That’s all we’ve got so far, but it’s a heck of a change in plans, isn’t it? It’s interesting that Verizon will be applying a sub-brand to its Android line — and a pretty solid sign that Big Red’s got a serious commitment to the platform going forward.

Filed under: Cellphones

Verizon’s Droid is a series, not just a phone; Droid Eris coming from HTC originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola tonight released the full specifications and a photo gallery of the highly-awaited Droid phone on their public Web site, pre-empting the anticipated October 28 announcement of Verizon Wireless’s first Android smartphone.

According to the Motorola site, which was first noticed by the Boy Genius Report blog but then independently confirmed and loaded by PCMag, the Droid is a large touchscreen phone with a sliding keyboard. It’s 2.4 x 4.6 x .5 inches in size and weighs six ounces. That’s relatively heavy, but slim. Its color will be “licorice w/brown sugar accents.”

The phone has an unusually high-resolution, 3.7″ 480×854 touch screen; the iPhone’s touch screen is only 320×480 resolution.

The Droid’s OS is Android 2.0, as Verizon previously showed on their teaser Web site for the device. It is the first Android 2.0 phone.

The Droid has a 550 Mhz processor, according to the site, which didn’t describe the processor architecture. The architecture is important because most Android phones up until now have run on 528 Mhz ARM11 processors, which some users consider sluggish in some circumstances. The recently announced Samsung Moment upped the ante to an 800 Mhz ARM11. If the Droid runs a newer form of architecture, known as Cortex-A8, it could be faster with a lower clock speed.

More details and photos after the jump.