Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Network World.
The world got an apparently unplanned preview of the Verizon Android-based Droid smartphone when Motorola briefly posted online the official Web pages describing and showing the new device in depth.
The impression is that of an Android iPhone with a slider keyboard.
The pages were quickly yanked from the Web, but not before bloggers and new sites quickly captured them. Slashgear even recorded their navigation through the phone’s 3-D simulation and posted it online.
The leaked information confirms the rumors swirling around the Droid (the name itself is licensed form George Lucas’ Lucasfilms) since Verizon’s controversial TV ads debuted this week, quietly but pointedly mocking a device dubbed the “iDon’t” and promising that the Droid will do everything the iDon’t doesn’t.
Here’s what the leak revealed:
- Almost identical in size to the iPhone: 2.4 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches; but quite a bit heavier at 6 oz. compared to 4.8 oz. for iPhone.
- A big 3.7-inch diagonal capacitive touchscreen with haptic feedback, 854×480 pixel resolution; that compares to the iPhone’s 3.5-inch multi-touchscreen with 480×320 pixels.
- Google Android 2.0, running on an unnamed 550MHz processor (though the smartphone site The Boy Genius Report, which claims to have handled a Droid prototype, says it’s a TI OMAP3430); a batch of e-mail and PIM applications that sync with Google’s online services; and a range of improvements and refinements over the original.
- Android’s Webkit-based browser, speedier in Android 2.0, with support for HTML 5, which will allow the browser to store and run a range of code and user information; it will support Adobe Flash 10.1 when that code is released next year.
- Wireless connectivity via EV-DO Rev A 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth, along with GPS (there’s also a micro USB port).
- 5-megapixel autofocus camera, with 4x digital zoom, and dual-LED flash.
- 1.400mAh battery, which Motorola says will deliver up to 6.5 hours of talk time and 270 hours of standby. The iPhone 3GS promises up to five hours on 3G and 300 hours standby.
- 6GB microSD card bundled, with an option for 32GB card when this capacity comes to market in 2010.
- “Advanced speech recognition” features promised by Verizon