Verizon's iPhone targeting Motorola Droid phone revealed

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  • Reply 21 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That was a major mistake allowing them to name the phone Droid. First of all, they'll be sued by Lucasfilm



    Yep, from wikipedia:



    "Droids are robots seen in Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Ben 10 and is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd"



    Good call. I was going to say you're full of sh!t until I looked up the facts before I did so.
  • Reply 22 of 135
    chronsterchronster Posts: 1,894member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    THIS is the fabled iPhone killer?? Oh wait .... That was the Pre.



    Hardware keyboard=fail, anyway.



    At least Motorola's managing to stay relevant. Kind of.



    Dude get off it. To some people this would be hands down an iphone killer, to others hands down NOT a killer. It's all opinionated.



    It's like telling someone with a size 12 foot that size 9 is the best! It's only the best for the people it fits.



    When you see anyone say something is an iphone killer, it's just bullshit plain and simple because there's no real measure of success. You could point to number of units sold, but even that can be viewed at different angles.



    Something occurred to me yesterday at the Sprint store while looking at a man trying to figure out the Hero. The customization feature is something a lot of people don't feel like messing with, or find frustrating, which is why the iphone's straight forwardness is better suited for them. It goes the other direction too though where people can't stand being locked into one design. So how do you put that "iDon't customize" line in a commercial and sell it as something better?



    It's all opinion.



    My opinion is this phone is nothing special.
  • Reply 23 of 135
    bfcbfc Posts: 5member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by vassillios View Post


    Yep, from wikipedia:



    "Droids are robots seen in Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Ben 10 and is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd"



    Good call. I was going to say you're full of sh!t until I looked up the facts before I did so.



    And if you did some more research you would know that Verizon has licensed the name Droid from Lucasfilm.
  • Reply 24 of 135
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member
    This thing looks pretty nasty anyway.
  • Reply 25 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That was a major mistake allowing them to name the phone Droid. First of all, they'll be sued by Lucasfilm, second, if the phone is a bust it'll be tied very, very closely to the entire Android moniker. They would have been much wiser to call it the "Transformr" (yes, there's a letter missing on purpose) and license the name if necessary from Hasbro.



    Hey, you may not have seen the commercials or the website for this phone, but both clearly state at the bottom the license info by Lucasfilm. Just FYI.
  • Reply 26 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That was a major mistake allowing them to name the phone Droid. First of all, they'll be sued by Lucasfilm,



    They have already licensed the name from LucasFilm. Look in the fine print on the website.
  • Reply 27 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by vassillios View Post


    Yep, from wikipedia:



    "Droids are robots seen in Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Ben 10 and is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd"



    Good call. I was going to say you're full of sh!t until I looked up the facts before I did so.



    If you or Spam Sandwich watched any tech news other than Apple Forum rooms you'd know they have a license agreement with Lucasfilms. Which implies that this is a well funded partnership.
  • Reply 28 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That was a major mistake allowing them to name the phone Droid.



    I agree. It will appeal to (male) teens and geeks (who are mostly male). I don't see women -- at least 50% of the population -- walking around with a 'Droid' in their purse. And, people can say what they want, but sales to that target segment matter.
  • Reply 29 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aplnub View Post


    I was actually excited to see the phone. Then they dropped a FUGLY keyboard on it. Poor, poor Verizon. They just haven't got it yet.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by vassillios View Post


    They could at least have put some sort of effort into the aesthetics of their iPhone "competitor". Ugly square shape, plain white buttons and a keyboard that looks like it was slapped together....but wait, what a pretty gold mouse thingy....NOT!



    Wow, typical fanboy nonsense arguing form over function. Oh god, a keyboard that looks like a keyboard! The horror!



    Really don't see how it looks much different than iPhone's "ugly square shape" and "plain" gray button.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Roos24 View Post


    Before everybody starts to praise the physical keyboard and how this is missing on the iPhone, here a thought.



    Every country overseas requires a different keyboard (e.g. Germany has the QWERTZ instead of QWERTY keyboard and the ä, ö and ü), France requires a different keyboard, all Scandinavian countries etc., etc, and not to forget the Asian countries. The Pre, and now the Droid will have to be produced with different keyboards if they want to sell them overseas. Translation: more expensive.



    Apple uses software to accommodate all languages. I think that is very smart. Moreover, typing on it with Apple's character recognition system is really easy and fast.



    Also, every key is another small little component that can fail.



    I prefer Apple's approach.[/QUOTE]



    As an international company, you don't think Motorola has thought of that? Pretty sure they already have keyboard equipped phones all around the globe. This will be no different. How much more expensive is it to print different characters on keys? Shouldn't be any more expensive since it's not like they'll have to change any machining. And it's not like they're going to have 50 different keyboard configurations, just 1 with the keys printed for the particular region it's sold in.



    Never used the iPhone's touch keyboard, but the touch keyboard on my phone (an LG) sucks tremendously. Sort of doubt that an iPhone would be much different. If I'm not typing something really short, I'll switch to the internal keyboard where I can type extremely fast.
  • Reply 30 of 135
    bad headline. at a minimum, you've gotta hyphenate iPhone and targeting: that makes those two words a single adjective modifying the Droid. otherwise you've begun by saying "Verizon's iPhone..." which yeah, got my attention, but also confused me. Also, I'm not sure "phone" was necessary.



    how about:



    Verizon's iPhone-targeting Moto Droid revealed ???



    or even



    Verizon's iPhone-targeting Droid revealed ???



    you don't have to say everything in the head.
  • Reply 31 of 135
    ifailifail Posts: 463member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by chronster View Post


    Dude get off it. To some people this would be hands down an iphone killer, to others hands down NOT a killer. It's all opinionated.



    It's like telling someone with a size 12 foot that size 9 is the best! It's only the best for the people it fits.



    When you see anyone say something is an iphone killer, it's just bullshit plain and simple because there's no real measure of success. You could point to number of units sold, but even that can be viewed at different angles.



    Something occurred to me yesterday at the Sprint store while looking at a man trying to figure out the Hero. The customization feature is something a lot of people don't feel like messing with, or find frustrating, which is why the iphone's straight forwardness is better suited for them. It goes the other direction too though where people can't stand being locked into one design. So how do you put that "iDon't customize" line in a commercial and sell it as something better?



    It's all opinion.



    My opinion is this phone is nothing special.



    if you don't like customization then they probably don't have any style or taste anyways and apples **** enviroment is probably enough for them.



    This phone is said to be slightly bigger than an iPhone which is pretty good for a slider unquestionably the highest typing speeds come from physical keyboards (I can easily

    ake my iPhone lag when typing, my bold doesn't hiccup at all at the same speeds).



    With it's gorgeous screen and now multitouch support along with a good camera decent app store and a nice underground dev community i guess the only thing the iPhone would have it beat at is being a music player using the **** infested iTunes and browsing the web.
  • Reply 32 of 135
    it has indeed taken almost 3 years (since Jan-07) to put up a seemingly worthy competitor to the iphone. I say "seemingly" since the Droid isn't released yet, so who knows what will happen. Let's just remember that all self-proclaimed iPhone-killers have failed at killing the iPhone, period. The only difference now is more intense marketing.



    Back in Jan-07, Steve Jobs said the iPhone was 5 years ahead of the competition, and so far he's been proven correct. The iPhone will eventually multi-task, but then the competition will simply find another "flaw" to harp on. It took many years for a "respectable" iPod competitior to appear (the Zune is, all in all, a decent MP3 player). However by then it was far too little, far too late. I suspect the same thing is happening with smartphones as well.
  • Reply 33 of 135
    I'm just hoping that the screen isn't set to full brightness in these pics. Otherwise, we'll, its going to be interesting it outdoors... lol
  • Reply 34 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post


    I agree. It will appeal to (male) teens and geeks (who are mostly male). I don't see women -- at least 50% of the population -- walking around with a 'Droid' in their purse. And, people can say what they want, but sales to that target segment matter.



    Hence advertising during playoff baseball. They know who their target market is - you don't see them advertising during Movie of the Week on Lifetime.
  • Reply 35 of 135
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,953member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ifail View Post


    if you don't like customization then they probably don't have any style or taste anyways and apples Nazi enviroment is probably enough for them.



    This phone is said to be slightly bigger than an iPhone which is pretty good for a slider unquestionably the highest typing speeds come from physical keyboards (I can easily

    ake my iPhone lag when typing, my bold doesn't hiccup at all at the same speeds).



    With it's gorgeous screen and now multitouch support along with a good camera decent app store and a nice underground dev community i guess the only thing the iPhone would have it beat at is being a music player using the aids infested iTunes and browsing the web.



    Nazi? AIDS infested? Grow up. Now.
  • Reply 36 of 135
    rob55rob55 Posts: 1,291member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ifail View Post


    if you don't like customization then they probably don't have any style or taste anyways and apples Nazi enviroment is probably enough for them.



    This phone is said to be slightly bigger than an iPhone which is pretty good for a slider unquestionably the highest typing speeds come from physical keyboards (I can easily

    ake my iPhone lag when typing, my bold doesn't hiccup at all at the same speeds).



    With it's gorgeous screen and now multitouch support along with a good camera decent app store and a nice underground dev community i guess the only thing the iPhone would have it beat at is being a music player using the aids infested iTunes and browsing the web.



    Wow, you used Nazi and AIDS to describe Apple and it's software in one post. A little pent-up hostility towards Apple maybe?
  • Reply 37 of 135
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    That was a major mistake allowing them to name the phone Droid. First of all, they'll be sued by Lucasfilm, second, if the phone is a bust it'll be tied very, very closely to the entire Android moniker. They would have been much wiser to call it the "Transformr" (yes, there's a letter missing on purpose) and license the name if necessary from Hasbro.



    Hmm... did you look at the website? It says they licensed the name from LucasFilm. They're good.
  • Reply 38 of 135
    nijiniji Posts: 288member
    verry moto-esque design

    verry 2000.

    its really so tired in design that it could be bought as a retro device and considered cool.
  • Reply 39 of 135
    It's obvious that Verizon's talks with Apple haven't / aren't going well, but given that Apple can provide the iPhone to another company after the exclusivity contract ends with AT&T in June of next year, this is just awful strategy. Sure the talks may not have been going well, and sure Apple would need to make a CDMA version of the iPhone for it to work properly on Verizon's network... but the odds of Apple doing a deal with other cell phone providers for June are very high. Why wouldn't Apple do a deal with T-Mobile or Sprint? You know they will be trying to, if anything just to get AT&T to pay more to re-up the existing deal.



    It seems to me that rather than killing all chances of getting the iPhone ever--which they have essentially done at this point knowing Steve's propensity to hold grudges-- they could have saved the money they are putting into the anti-iPhone ads and "iPhone killer" phones and just... done a deal to get the iPhone. As it is Verizon's tired story of "awesome network, crappy phones" will just continue to be true. Or at the very least become "awesome network, better phones than before but not the best/most appealing phone on the market."
  • Reply 40 of 135
    I manage our Verizon devices and so have a long history with them. I just don't know who is running the show - This in my opinion is the 2nd time they have made a bad decision in not joining with Apple. Then, to come out with an ugly device that isn't even live yet and be so confident is crazy.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by vassillios View Post


    They could at least have put some sort of effort into the aesthetics of their iPhone "competitor". Ugly square shape, plain white buttons and a keyboard that looks like it was slapped together....but wait, what a pretty gold mouse thingy....NOT!



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