Verizon Site Mentions Oct. 30 Date For Droid Android Phone
Posted in: Android, Today's Chili, verizon 
A new promotional Web site from Verizon Wireless appears to mention an October 30 date for their new Android 2.0-powered “Droid” phone. It’s still unclear whether that’s an announcement or sale date.
The site, at www.verizonwireless.com/droid, contains a countdown clock in code using ten symbols, each of which represent a number from 0-9. If you decode the symbols, the clock is counting down to midnight at the beginning of October 30, 2009. (At 9:29 PM on October 17, the clock read 12 days, 2 hours, 30 minutes, and some seconds.)
The site’s promotional language describes the Droid further. It promises “5 megapixels … Android 2.0 … speech recognition … notification panel … directions … video … tunes … 10,000+ apps … the network … multitasking … high speed … hi-res.”
The site also attacks Apple’s iPhone in direct language that’s rarely been seen before. “iDon’t take night shots,” it says in an Apple-like font on a white background, similar to the look of Apple ads. “iDon’t allow open development … everything iDon’t, DroidDoes.”
The Droid is generally assumed to be the name of a Verizon Android phone produced by Motorola. Last week, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam promised the first of several Android phone launches “in a few weeks” and followed up with an official press photo of himself and Google CEO Eric Schmidt wielding two Verizon Android phones, one assumed to be the Motorola device and the other looking like a variant of Sprint’s HTC Hero.
No other phones so far have run version 2.0 of the Android OS, codenamed “Eclair,” though the appearance of a giant inflatable pastry on the Google campus this week foreshadowed its coming.
Verizon has been stepping up their widely-derided smartphone line recently with the Windows Mobile 6.5-powered HTC Imagio and an anticipated near-term release of the BlackBerry Storm2, which we reviewed this week.
You can sign up for more information about Verizon’s “Droid” at http://phones.verizonwireless.com/motorola/droid/?cmp=OTC-Droid-redirect1
(Thanks to Boy Genius for tipping me off to the site URL via Twitter)
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