Who will win the Cliq Vs Droid fight? Who cares? T-Mobile and Verizon care. T-Mobile’s Cliq and Verizon’s Droid are the latest devices taking on the iPhone.
Motorola’s Android-powered touchscreen phone is coming to Verizon in a couple of weeks, according to an “iDon’t, Droid Does” ad that ran this weekend. The ad takes aim at some of the shortcomings of the iPhone, such as its lack of a keyboard, lower-resolution camera and unchangeable battery.
The phone, codenamed Sholes — named for the inventor of the typewriter — was expected to arrive at Verizon this month, but last-minute issues with the phone, which may have caused the delay, were apparently resolved, according to The Street.
BoyGeniusReport has posted pictures of the phone and praised its super-thin design. Its slide-out keyboard is only slightly thicker than the keyboardless iPhone. The phone also uses a Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor chip based on the ARM processing system.
Meanwhile T-Mobile is offering Motorola’s CLIQ (right), an Android-based, MOTOBLUR-running, physical keyboard phone. It is available now for $199 (for current T-Mobile customers). New subscribers must wait until November 2nd to get one.
What’s the difference between T-Mobile’s CLIQ and Verizon’s Droid?
- The Motorola Droid/Sholes on Verizon (specs), reportedly runs Google’s Android 2.0 operating system and features a metal chassis, large 3.7-inch capacitive display (854 by 480 pixels); 5-megapixel camera with flash, autofocus and video recorder; GPS; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 2.0; and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It uses a Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor, the same processor as the Palm Pre. The OMAP3430 features a 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX 530 GPU + 430MHz C64x+ DSP + ISP (Image Signal Processor).
- The Motorola Cliq on T-Mobile (specs) is available now through T-Mobile. It’s a smaller phone with a 3.1-inch 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch display, a 5-megapixel camera and 3.5-mm headphone jack. It uses a Qualcomm 528MHz MSM 7201A ARM processor, similar to current Android phones — and runs on T-Mobile’s network.
Feature comparisons are transitory. Acer is customizing Android on its navigation phone with a large display. It will use the 1GHz Snapdragon processor, currently the fastest processor for handsets.
Many more Android phones will be announced soon, not to mention competition from Apple, RIM, Palm, Microsoft and others. Finding the best carrier may become more important as smartphones become more competitive with Apple’s iPhone.
Google reported revenues of $5.94 billion yesterday for its third quarter, an increase of 7 percent compared to $5.54 billion in the same period last year. Their mobile search revenues were up 30 percent from the previous quarter, without putting specific dollar amounts on the figure.
This Droid product is not coming to Verizon but will be coming to Verizon Wireless an entirely different Network and technology. Not sure why analysts make this mistake, maybe harder to write Verizon Wireless.
Left by jacomo on October 19th, 2009