Hasta La Gadget!

Remember those BASF commercials, the: “We make a lot of the products you buy better” ones? That’s kind of the story at MOTO Development Group. We’ve seen the company working on e-ink internals, also having a hand in the creation of the Zune 2.0 and the Livescribe Pulse. MOTO’s going it alone for its latest product, though, a MID reference design called the Android Media Platform (AMP) that runs Android 2.0 and is available now to developers. Yes, the DROID isn’t the only 2.0 player releasing today. AMP will ultimately be available in three sizes: 10-, 5-, and 3.5-inches; the mid-sized model is the one shipping now. That touchscreen can be OLED or LCD, oomph is provided by a Texas Instruments OMAP3430 CPU, accelerometers and GPS are integrated as is 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and optional 3G wireless, all powered by a 3,000mAh battery. There’s no word on price, but we’re guessing that’s somewhat negotiable depending on your intended application and, naturally, the volume, volume, volume of your order.

[Via OLED-Info.com]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video, Tablet PCs, Wireless

MOTO releases AMP MID, the OLED Android 2.0 handheld you didn’t even know existed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After weeks of buildup the day is here: the DROID (and his little HTC buddy, the DROID Eris) is now for sale on Verizon’s website. As expected Motorola’s new flagship will set you back $200 after $100 online discount and two-year commitment while his underhyped Eris little bro is a penny shy of $100 after the same discount and contractual prostration. If you’re looking to shed your contractual duties then you can hand over $560 in non-Android green for the option of going month-to-month.

[Via Gearlog, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read — Motorola DROID
Read — HTC DROID Eris

Filed under: Cellphones

DROID and DROID Eris now cash sentient on Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I just dashed off this quick video for my Twitter followers to demonstrate that the DROID doesn’t have a multitouch soft keyboard, and pretty much instantly realized that I should probably share it with everyone else, since we’ve been getting a lot of questions about it. Long story short, while Android 2.0 and the DROID’s hardware support multitouch, the device itself doesn’t do multitouch out-of-the-box, and the soft keyboard suffers mightily for it. Why it’s missing is certainly open for debate, but for now just know that no amount of hoping, wishing, or booze is going to make the stock keyboard register more than one press at a time. Don’t despair, though — while I’m not a fan, Chris Ziegler absolutely flies on this same keyboard on his DROID. Videos after the break.

Continue reading iPhone vs DROID multitouch keyboard showdown (video)

Filed under: Cellphones

iPhone vs DROID multitouch keyboard showdown (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Android army is on the march with the launch of yet another handset running the Google-designed open source operating system.

HTC, the torchbearer of the Android movement, has introduced its latest phone called the Droid Eris. The phone will be available on the Verizon Wireless network starting Friday. With its $100 price tag (along with a two-year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate), the Droid Eris is also the most inexpensive Android phone on the market currently. It also directly competes with Apple’s $100 offering, the 8-GB iPhone 3G.

The Droid Eris will be the second Android phone on Verizon’s network, fulfilling a promise that the telecom carrier made a few months ago to have at least two Android handsets in its portfolio this year. Last month, Verizon introduced the Motorola Droid for $200 with a two-year contract.

The HTC Droid Eris has a 3.2-inch multitouch display, a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, Wi-Fi and GPS capability. It will feature a full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities. And it’ll run HTC’s Sense user interface, first seen in HTC’s Hero phone.

Just as with Palm Pre’s webOS and Motorola’s Cliq, HTC’s Sense UI organizes the phone around contacts from different sources such as e-mail, social networking sites and the phone book. It will allow users to add widgets that aggregate information such as Twitter feeds, weather data, e-mail or calendar. The UI will also have a profile feature called “Scenes” that lets users create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times such as “Work” and “Play.”

Right now the only drawback is that the Droid Eris will not ship with Android 2.0, the latest version of the Android operating system. Instead it will run Android 1.5. But HTC says it will upgrade the phone to Android 2.0 once it has worked out all the compatibility issues between the Sense UI and the newest version of the operating system.

See Also:

• HTC Introduces Its Third Android Phone
• Sprint to Sell the HTC Hero Android Phone
• Hands On With HTC G2 Android Phone
• Review: Sprint HTC Hero
• HTC Announces New Customizable Android ‘Tattoo’ Phone

The Motorola Droid doesn’t go on sale until tomorrow, but Verizon Wireless is already pushing the second device in that line: the Verizon Droid Eris. Essentially a rebranded version of Sprint’s HTC Hero, the Eris (see it in action in the above video) goes on sale the same day as the Motorola Droid, but for $99 ($100 less than Motorola’s handset).

The Eris runs Android 1.5, features a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen, and a 528-MHz Qualcomm processor (less powerful than the Motorola’s ARM Cortex-A8). For more information on the handset, along with a slideshow, check out PCMag.com.