Motorola Droid Android Phone Coming From Verizon Next Week? [Motorola Droid aka Tao aka Sholes to be Announced on October 6 at MOTODEV Android Event; Available in December from Verizon]

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Verizon’s first Android phone is a phone that Big Red’s subscribers have been waiting for a while now. It’s not a secret anymore that Motorola will be the company making it and, if rumors and predictions are correct, the handset should be announced next week. Previously known as the Sholes or the Tao, the Droid will be announced at Motorola’s MOTODEV Android event on October 6 and Verizon will bring it to the restless masses in December.

We’ve seen shots of the Sholes all summer long. A Motorola phone combining a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard and destined to run Android under Verizon’s flag. Then the name suddenly changed first to Tao and then the Droid but the phone has basically remained the same.

According to analysts, the Droid’s release is imminent. Motorola’s MOTODEV Android event is approaching fast so it would make sense letting the Droid out in the open. Especially since October 6 is the day when Microsoft is going to launch Windows Mobile 6.5 into the wild. A little Android competition might could not hurt, could it? Following the predicted announcement Verizon should start selling the phone but don’t expect to get it sooner than late November or early December.

I personally think that Verizon should have entered the Android business a long time. It certainly has enough subscribers and a dependable network to support these Android phones since Google’s OS is getting more and more popular. Verizon’s strategy seems to be the concurrent launch of an Android phone and RIM’s BlackBerry Storm 2 right in time for the holidays which isn’t a bad move at all.

What does the Droid bring to the table? Besides to the 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen display capable of WVGA resolutions and the full QWERTY keyboard, the handset will offer a 5-megapixel camera, an ARM Cortext 500MHz processor and a custom Motorola user interface. Don’t expect MOTOBLUR, the social networking-based UI of Motorola’s CLIQ, to be included, as people say at this time that it won’t be available on the Droid. The good news is that the phone will probably come with Android 1.6 running in the background but we’ll still have to confirm all the features above before we pop the champagne and start the celebrations.