Verizon Unveils Droid Smartphone

Verizon's Droid smartphone—built by Motorola and powered by Google's Android—goes on sale Nov. 6 for $200. Some early opinions on the iPhone challenger:

• The phone is "almost not worth writing about," notes Chris Dannen in Fast Company. It's "fine" but "doesn't advance" the Android platform. About all it has going for it is a cool commercial, "which is cool, if you like commercials, but less important if you like smartphones that do stuff well."

• Michael Bettiol is awed by the Droid's features: "WiFi, Bluetooth, Exchange support, 6.4 hours of talk time, and a pre-installed 16GB memory card—all running on top of Android 2.0." At $200, he writes on TechBlogger, it's "one hell of a steal."
• Stephen H. Wildstrom sees big changes a-brewing in the market. The Droid "is not only a very good smartphone," he writes in BusinessWeek, but it "throws the Verizon marketing juggernaut and its top-tier 3G network behind the fledgling Android operating system." All told, the combo represents "a big step forward."
• Darren Murph relishes the inclusion of a full keyboard, 5-megapixel camera, and GPS-enabled turn-by-turn directions from Google Maps. "Who needs an iPhone?" he wonders on Engadget, and notes that the GPS feature will "have your dedicated TomTom/Garmin trembling in fear."

(More Google Android stories.)