Droid
edit

The Motorola Droid is an Android-based smartphone by Motorola to be initially distributed by Verizon Wireless in the United States. Features of the phone include Wi-Fi networking, a 5-megapixel low light capable digital camera, a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, interchangable battery, 3.7-inch 854 x 480 touchscreen, MicroSDHC support with bundled 16GB card, turn-by-turn Google Maps navigation, and a QWERTY keyboard. Its processor is a Texas Instruments OMAP 3430, which is used by the Palm Pre and Nokia N900 as well. It has a hearing aid compatibility (hac) rating of M3/T3.

The Motorola Droid runs version 2.0, codenamed Eclair, of Google’s Android operating system. The phone does not, however, run the re-branded MOTOBLUR version of Android, instead providing the Google Experience skin and application stack. The stock Android operating system restricts applications from being installed outside of onboard memory, in this case limiting application and OS size to a total maximum size of 512MB.

The November 6, 2009 release date of the Droid comes just under a month after Verizon and Google announced that they had entered into an agreement to jointly develop wireless devices based on the Android mobile platform. Verizon said at the time that it planned to have two Android-based handsets on the market by year-end with more to come in 2010. The other handset is to be the HTC Eris, a modification to the HTC Hero, seen in shots of Google CEO Eric Schmidt holding one in a Verizon/Google press conference.

The Droid had been publicized under the codenames Sholes and Tao and the model number A855. The GSM/UMTS version is named Motorola Milestone.