Over the weekend, Google, Verizon and Motorola launched their public campaign for their new smartphone – which is targeted directly at Apple’s iPhone. The new Droid Android collaborative effort looks to be the first really threat to the iPhone and will be available later this month (the rumor is that it will launch at midnight on October 31). The targeted “iDon’t” marketing campaign, which highlights the features the iPhone does not deliver but the Droid does, took off this weekend with the following ad:
The Droid looks a bit thinner than the iPhone 3GS and has a number of features the iPhone doesn’t – like the ability to take flash pictures. The two biggest advantages the Droid has over the iPhone are the slide out physical keyboard and the coverage of the Verizon network which is much more pervasive than AT&T.
The three-way effort between Motorola, Verizon and Google has been pretty secretive and stealthy. Given players at the table, this should mark the first really competitive threat the iPhone’s dominance in the rich smartphone market. Even while the specifics of the phone and launch are still unknown, some of the potential specs of the phone have been leaked, courtesy of TechCrunch:
* OMAP3430 – 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX 530 GPU + 430MHz C64x+ DSP + ISP (Image Signal Processor)
* Dimensions 60.00 x 115.80 x 13.70 mm
* Weight 169 g
* Battery Li-ion 1400 mAh.
* Standby 450 hours, talk time 420 minutes
* 3.7-inch touch-sensitive display with a resolution of 854×480 pixels, 16 million color depth. Physical screen size is 45.72 mm by 81.34 mm.
* 512MB/256MB ROM/RAM
* microSD / microSDHC expansion slot
* Camera: 5.0 megapixel with autofocus and video recorder
* Connectivity: USB2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, Wi-Fi
* Operating System: Android 2.0 (with Eclair, no Motoblur)
* Package Contents: Phone Motorola Sholes, battery, charger, USB cable, 8GB MicroSD memory card and other literature
You can register at the DroidDoes.com site to be notified of the launch.
The Droid will definitely make a dent in the iPhone’s market share. The question is how much? Previous attempts have fallen short – Palm Pre. That said, the big three backing this project (Google, Motorola and Verizon) will surely make Apple take notice.
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