Big Red takes on iPhone with an Android phone

Oct 18, 2009 12:32 GMT  ·  By

Wireless carrier Verizon has finally made a more solid move in letting us know when it will release its first mobile phone powered by Google's Android operating system. October 30 will be the lucky day, showed on a recently launched promotional website from the carrier, which touts an upcoming Droid phone that will come to the market with Android-2.0 on board.

A countdown clock that can be seen on the new website seems to point towards October 30 as the launch date, though we cannot say for sure whether the mobile phone carrier will make an announcement or it will put the Android handset on the shelves that day. However, a promo video found on YouTube ends up with “November” on the screen, which might suggest that it will be only next month that Verizon will have the handset on sale.

“iDon't have a real keyboard. iDon't run simultaneous apps. iDon't take night shots. iDon't allow open development. iDon't customize. iDon't run widgets. iDon't have interchangeable batteries. Everything iDon't...Droid Does,” is what the promotional site says. As one can easily imagine, it is targeted at Apple's iPhone, and all the drawbacks the iconic device comes to the market with.

When it comes to what the Droid handset should deliver, the promotional website shows: “10,000+ apps, the network, multitasking, high speed, hi-res, 5-megapixels, Android 2.0, speech recognition, notification panel, directions, video, tunes.” Most of these “features” have already been reported to come along with the yet unannounced Motorola Droid (Sholes), which means that Verizon is finally getting ready to launch the phone on its airwaves.

Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam already said a few days ago that the carrier would launch its first handset powered by Android within the following weeks, and Motorola Droid has been rumored for quite some time now to hit the shelves with Android 2.0 on board, so things are starting to move on the expected direction. At the time of this article, the countdown clock on Droid's promo site showed 11/10/00/xx, which means that we still have to wait about 11 days and 10 hours before things become official. Stay tuned for more info on this.