The Droid Has Landed...Unboxed! Plus a Few Facts

So the Droid from Verizon just landed and we have an unboxing video. Despite all the hype, I have this to say to the makers of the iPhone: You’ve got nothing to worry about. Go out, have fun and get into the hands of a few more millions. As for the BlackBerry, its makers better be worried. Watch the unboxing video below the fold.

I’m not sure how you guys will feel about the Droid in a few days, but I can safely say that like so many so-called iPhone killers in the past, this isn’t one. That’s not a judgment as to the robustness or usability of the device — I need more time for that — it’s just that Verizon seriously overhyped it.

The New York Times’ Saul Hansell has the whole story on Motorola, Sanjay Jha and how the Droid came to be. It’s an interesting read, and one which reveals that the design choices (or lack there off) are courtesy of Verizon. As Hansell writes:

They found a way to fit a slide-out keyboard into a phone that was only 1.5 millimeters thicker than the iPhone. And they used a 3.7-inch touchscreen, noticeably bigger than the 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone. To take advantage of the higher resolution of that screen, Motorola, working with Google, developed new software that would support high-definition video and 3-D graphics.

Here are some facts about Droid collected by our team.

• Doesn’t appear to be full Microsoft Exchange support — includes Calendar, Mail and Contacts, but not Tasks or Notes, on which some corporate users rely.
• Placing the Droid in the optional car dock immediately opens up the “Car Dock” interface, and turn-by-turn GPS directions are available.
• Placing the Droid in the optional media dock places the Droid into an alarm clock and media player mode.
• The interface is a stock Google Android 2.0 design, so no extra home screens like some other recent devices.
• Unlike some HTC Android devices, Droid offers a standard 3.5 mm headset jack.
• Like webOS Synergy, Droid unifies contacts from Gmail, Facebook and Exchange.
• Dedicated hardware keys offer haptic feedback.
• Verizon includes a 16GB SD card with the Droid, it supports 32GB.
• Droid’s 5MP camera with flash trumps most other current phones with 720×480 (DVD Quality) recording at 24 fps
• The camera also supports Image Stabilization, real-time color effects, scene modes and location tagging.
• Droid does have an accelerometer and landscape keyboard, so it’s not necessary to slide out the QWERTY keyboard for landscape entry.
• There’s no MotoBLUR, but there is a Facebook widget.
• Back of the device is soft touch.
• The 854×480 display offers a higher resolution than the first ASUS Eee PC netbook, which was 800×480.
• Droid runs the same Snapdragon chip as the iPhone.

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