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Motorola Droid launch draws a crowd
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A Droid display at a Verizon Wireless store in Brentwood, Calif.
Even in Brentwood, Calif., a suburb about 50 miles east of San Francisco, the Verizon Wireless store had to add staff and open early to prepare for the launch of the Motorola Droid smartphone.
Even there, 10 to 15 people were lined up before the store opened at 7:00 a.m. (three hours earlier than usual) to go in and snap up the latest must have gadget, said store manager David Druyor. While nothing compared to the hundreds of people I saw camped outside the Apple store in downtown San Francisco for the 2007 launch of the iPhone, Druyor put today’s Droid launch on par with that of the BlackBerry Storm at Verizon last year.
Verizon stores and other retailers that resell Verizon phones and service put the Droid on their shelves for the first time today, alongside the HTC Droid Eris. While from different manufacturers and selling at different prices, both phones run Google’s Android operating system, which is quickly becoming popular.
Engadget reports some Best Buy stores and other retailers started selling the Droid at midnight Friday. Verizon said one of its stores in New York City started selling Droid at midnight and the carrier posted video for media to use of people shopping in its store.
The Motorola Droid runs the newest Android OS, version 2.0 while the Eris runs version 1.5, which means the former runs Google Navigation and the latter does not. The Motorola model has a slightly faster 550MHz processor to the HTC model’s 528MHz. And the Droid sells for US$199.99 after a $100 rebate and a two year contract. The Droid Eris sells for only $99.99 after rebate. The Motorola is a slider form factor smartphone that also has an onscreen keyboard, while the HTC model offers only an onscreen keyboard.
Druyor demonstrated the Motorola Droid for me, with its slideout QWERTY keyboard. As far as “wow” factor features of the Droid, I’d have to put the Google Search By Voice application at the top of the list. By pressing and holding a button on the face of the device, a window appears onscreen ready to take your voice search request. Druyor said “pizza, Brentwood, California” and up popped a list of pizza restaurants nearby. I took the phone and said “oil change, Brentwood, California” and the nearby Jiffy Lube and other such outlets appeared onscreen. Even with the ambient noise of a busy store in the background, the phone recognized the search request easily. Other voice-recognition applications I’ve used, for voice dialing for example, had to guess a few times before getting it right. Google Search by Voice got it right the first time, at least in my limited experience wiith it.
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