Microsoft, Google, Motorola and Intel have all shown interest, with devices needing to be GPS compatible—much like your average smartphone. [eWeek via Engadget]

If you hate the gallery format, click here.

All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.

AT&T

iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It's really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing's perfect. $199

BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold's king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10

Bonus: Nokia e71x
It's free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free

Verizon

Droid
It's a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it's running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150

BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it's notorious for trackball problems and it's missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they're not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50

Bonus: Droid Eris
If you're desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100

Sprint

Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm's webOS, and it's probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80

HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC's Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100

Bonus: There is none. The Pixi's close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.

T-Mobile

Motorola Cliq
Motorola's other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that's bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It's our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100

Unlocked iPhone
No, I'm not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.

Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it's good the reasons listed above, too. $130

The seller bills the phone as "limited edition," which means this is, purportedly, one of only five such prototypes produced. The anonymity and volatility of the Internet means I trust this guy about as much as I do a baby with a razor blade, but nevertheless there are some other key differences present that indicate this phone is slightly different than the standard Droid.

For instance the keys are silver instead of gold; the bezel is chrome, not black; and the LED lighting on the buttons is "enhanced." The phone is fully operational and awaiting activation. Trust this guy? Bidding starts at $485. [eBay via Engadget]

This is almost a surprising price drop after what we heard was a pretty decent launch for this handset. Why such a rush to lower price if sales are good? [Dell via 9 to 5 Mac]

* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
* Tri-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100MHz)
* 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash
* 256MB RAM
* aGPS
* Wi-Fi
* 3.1″ capacitive 480×320 display
* Bluetooth 2.0
* Weight: 133g
* 1400mAh battery
* microSD slot
* Qualcomm MSM 7201A CPU
* MOTOBLUR

Yup, it does look a whole lot like a AT&T-3G-friendly CLIQ with Wi-Fi, which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. [BGR]

There's a rounding-error bug in the camera driver's autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle. That is, it'll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again.

The 17th is the start of a new "works correctly" cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.

But of course! I understand perfectly why a camera would be dependent on the date. Chances are good that this will have a legit fix before 24.5 days are up, but man, what a weird bug. [Engadget via GadgetLab]

AT&T's 3G Network Sees 2,000% Increase Since iPhone 3G Release

In the wake of a big $65 million upgrade to its network here in the San Francisco Bay Area, AT&T revealed that the improvement was due to 3G usage being up 2,000% after the release of the iPhone 3G last year. That sounds like a crazy number for which the iPhone deserves all kinds of high fives, but it's really not surprising—how many AT&T 3G phones were there before the iPhone 3G, even? And of course 3G use across the board is up in crazy numbers, since smartphones have really started taking off in the last year or so—so to be honest, the number doesn't really mean all that much. Hence its ending up here in the sad pit of Remainders. [All Things D]

Droid Camera Fixed, Without Explanation?

The Motorola Droid camera is a serious problem. I can't compete with Matt's angry poetry on the subject, so here it is, clipped from his review:

The camera is complete garbage. It takes 10 years to start up, 2 to focus, and another 4 to actually take the goddamn picture. And there's no distinct visual feedback to let you know a photo's been snapped. And the photos suck. That pumpkin shot, in decent lighting, is as good as it gets. Like I said in the Android 2.0 review, I don't know if it's the hardware or the software, but it's inexcusably bad.

Yow. But users have spontaneously been reporting that the camera, all of a sudden, has stopped sucking—what's the deal? Apparently there was some kind of bug wherein a particular state of the clock (meaning, time of day) screws with the Droid's autofocusing, which sounds insane to me, but what do I know? Apparently it should work okay now, and while it's temporary, the incoming Dec. 11th bug fix should take care of things. [Electronista]

Genius Bar App Won't Help if Your iPhone Is Broken

Rumor has it that Apple is planning to add a Genius Bar app to the App Store (appappappapp) that will let you make appointments, track your place in line, and curse the world when you realize you can't use the app because your iPhone is broken, which is the whole reason you need to make the appointment in the first place. Catch 22 apps are the very best kind of apps. [TUAW]

Samsung Beats out Vizio for Top LCD Seller

I bet you've been waiting by your computer, eager to see who managed to eke out the top spot in the LCD sales wars this fiscal quarter. Will it be Vizio, the low-priced upstart who took the LCD world by storm? Or Samsung, the crafty veteran with the quality sets and sleek design? Looks like this quarter, Samsung took the prize—and it's in Remainders because honestly who cares, at all. [CrunchGear]

Luckily, the bug appears to be software related. Time for a patch.

Who amongst the swelling Droid ranks has experienced this annoying issue? [Droid Support Forums via Engadget]

It's the best phone on Verizon, and with Android 2.0, the second best smartphone you can buy, period. It's flawed, deeply in some ways. But it's the second best phone around, on the best network around.

Droid is a champion of possibilities: for Motorola, for Verizon, for Android 2.0. It exists to show you what each of them can really do. You can kind of think of it like a Super G1, laying out what it means to be an Android 2.0 phone, with powerful new processors and delicious new displays with sky-high resolutions. If Droid is merely the first in a new wave, we have a lot to be excited about.

The Shiny New OS

The main attraction for Droid is Android 2.0, the remarkably updated mobile OS from Google. It's so important, it gets its own review. After all, you will start to see it on other phones soon. It's what makes Droid so great—new navigation app, new contacts/social network syncing, better email management, better browser—but also why Droid still falls short of the iPhone, particularly when it comes to managing music and video. If there's something you don't see here, chances are we discussed it in the earlier piece—if you care about the phone, you're gonna want to read the full software review too.

Design and Build

It didn't hit me until last weekend why Droid's design struck such an emotional chord with me. Was it the functionalist, industrial masculinity, expressed perfectly through glass and metal and unapologetic angles, in a powerful phone that's remarkably streamlined? It's all of that, yes. But it's also the fact that aesthetic is rendered black and gold metal accents, which is why it taps into something deep and profoundly affective from my childhood:
It's practically cheating. I can't not love the design of this phone.

Oh, That Screen

Droid's 3.7-inch, 854x480 display with an eye-popping pixel density of 267ppi, is the kind of screen you ache for. An analogy: Do you remember how amazing you thought Nintendo 64 games looked, ten years ago? Have you looked at them lately? Do you remember the sinking feeling you got, realizing just how ugly they are now? That's how'll you'll feel looking at every other phone with the now-standard 480x320 screens we thought were so gorgeous a couple of years ago. They're lo-fi and lifeless by comparison.

It's the clarity of the text that captivates. It's true, there've been Windows phones with excellent screens that have the same resolution as Droid, but the font rendering has always been too weak to take advantage of them. Reading ebooks on an iPhone has always given me a headache (so I don't), but with Droid's pixel density, I could read on it for hours. It's that good. The color's fantastic, too, though not Zune HD OLED level.

Touch response is mostly effective. When there are misfires, like getting no response when you flick your finger to pull out the app menu, it's hard to tell if it's the phone or the software—at least until more Android 2.0 phones are out there. But no serious complaints.

Keyboard and Strange Buttons

The keyboard is okay. I liked it a lot more on Day 1 than I do today, and that's because I never got any faster. The problem is that the key landscape is too flat and homogenous—a necessary sacrifice for Droid's remarkable skinniness—so there's simply no way to feel out precisely what key your thumb's on, meaning I never broke out of having to stare at the keyboard while typing. I found the actual layout to be excellent. Overall, the keyboard works, but you'll probably never fly on it. I'm faster on the landscape touch keyboard, personally.

The d-pad's not as dandy as a trackball for getting around, but for navigating around text, it's better than I expected—despite its puniness, I never pressed the wrong button.

But I hate the four soft touch buttons on the front of the phone. For one, there are no dedicated phone or end call buttons, so if you accidentally call somebody at 4am, you have to figure out how to end the call exclusively via the software interface. For two, the lack of feedback is annoying, especially if you're holding down the search button trying to activate voice search and it's not coming up. Did you miss the button? Are you pressing it wrong? Who knows? If Android's going to rely hard on these four buttons, the way iPhone relies on the home button, they need to be actual physical objects.

This Camera Sucks

The camera is complete garbage. It takes 10 years to start up, 2 to focus, and another 4 to actually take the goddamn picture. And there's no distinct visual feedback to let you know a photo's been snapped. And the photos suck. That pumpkin shot, in decent lighting, is as good as it gets. Like I said in the Android 2.0 review, I don't know if it's the hardware or the software, but it's inexcusably bad. (Update: Here's a couple of more shots from the camera. You can compare the indoors one with the much better Sprint Hero sample shot seen here, since they were taken in the same place.)

Video's not terrible, though, beyond the fussy format even VLC doesn't even like playing:

Performance

Droid's brain is a potent ARM Cortex A8 TI OMAP 3430—it's basically the same as the chips inside of the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS. Like I said in the Android 2.0 review, while it runs apps and multitasks with gusto, basic things like menus and the desktop stutter way too often. It's like driving a Ferrari with a door that groans loudly every time you open it.

Battery Life

With moderate to heavy usage—browsing, some navigation, push Gmail, moderate app usage, with the occasional app running in the background—I managed to make it through a full 8-12 hour day before recharging, each day for about a week, though some days were closer than others. Your mileage will vary, depending on how many apps you've got running in the background and how much you hit GPS, but my experience was that it was entirely acceptable for a modern smartphone.

Nuts, Bolts and Stability

Verizon's network is top notch, and being able to actually use the internet on my phone with impunity in New York is revelatory. In both New York and Seattle testing, reception has been excellent, though around Pittsburgh, it was spottier than expected. Voice quality was pretty excellent whenever we didn't use Google Voice.

While definitely stable enough to use as an everyday phone, we did run into a few bugs: GPS accuracy was wildly off-target on more than one occasion, pinpointing our location hundreds of miles away, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the phone (I assume that's a software issue, not a hardware one). We also had one complete crash after finishing a phone call that required a reboot. And more apps stopped responding more often than we were used to on previous versions of Android, requiring a force close.

Hello, Moto

These things are true about Droid: The camera's not great; the keyboard isn't mindblowing; Android 2.0 lacks the polish and multimedia prowess to completely match the iPhone. What's also true is that a killer design, Google's services, Android's exploding app ecosytem, powerful multitasking, a stunning screen and Verizon's network still make it the second best phone you can buy right now, after the iPhone.

At the same time, there's reason to pause. Android is evolving more rapidly than any other smartphone platform, both in terms of the hardware and software. When HTC's Hero came out, it crushed every other Android phone out there. Just a couple short months later, Droid is on top. In four months, we'll probably see a new champion. That Droid sets such a high bar for everything after might be the best thing about it.

Display, display, display

Um, just look at it

A smartphone you actually want on Verizon!

Keyboard is merely adequate, at best

Camera is utter garbage

[Droid]

The Motorola CLIQ, a new Android smartphone from Motorola with a bevy of social networking features, is now shipping. The phone is the first to employ Motoblur, a software integrating various social networking and communication functions for ease of use. We reviewed the CLIQ a few weeks ago and thought it had much promise, despite some issues with a sluggish processor. The phone is available through T-Mobile for $199.99 after discount. [T-Mobile]

Also available today is the SkyDock from XM, the first device to let drivers control satellite radio with their iPhone or iPod Touch. Though it didn't knock our socks off when we tried it, the SkyDock does deliver on its promise and is currently the only way to tap into XM radio in the car via the iPhone. Available from the Apple Store, Best Buy, Radio Shack and other retailers for $120, the SkyDock is powered by the car's DC plug and allows listeners to tag songs on XM for later purchase through the iTunes music store. But of course. [XM]

Maybe it goes back to the whole multi-touch patent issue with Apple, I don't know. If it turns out the Milestone does indeed have multi-touch when it arrives on November 9, hopefully some sort of patch hack will make its way State-side. [Mobile-Review (translated) via SlashGear]

The new name is not as tech-heavy of geektastic as Droid, but we can see the point. From here on out, things are going to be different (hopes Verizon/Motorola).

The image comes from the O2 web site, where the Droid is masquerading about as the Milestone for a presumably contract-free price of about $595. Launch day is November 9, a mere three days after we Yanks get the coveted handset here in the States. No word on whether or not O2 scored an exclusive here or what, as there's no mention of the phone popping up on other carriers' web sites. [Slashgear]

Head of Android development Andy Rubin states the obvious by saying it would be foolish for Google to "compete with its customers" who license the OS. In his own words, "We're not making hardware. We're enabling other people to build hardware."

This is how licensing OSes has generally worked, with the PC and Windows Mobile. (But not with the Mac during the clone wars, which eventually ended in cancellation.)

As CNET points out, Google sometimes plays a part in designing phones. Apparently the hinge mechanism in the G1 was added at Google's request. But that's a long way from designing a whole phone.

Phones like the Droid were also rumored to have been developed with Google helping along the way. As long as the trend keeps up, I'm sure Google will be perfectly happy to let Motorola, HTC and others spread their OS like the sneaky little world-dominating thing it is. [CNET via Electronista]

Plus, you can pre-order it today. I'd wait for the reviews in about a week though, personally. [BusinessWire via Engadget]

The video is from Vietnamese site, Tinhte.com, (no freaky extra finger this time), so is likely an engineering sample. That'd also explain the sluggish response it seems to have. [YouTube via SlashGear]

Right after taking the cursed reins of Motorola, then-incoming CEO Sanjay Jha had a short town hall meeting and was accosted by a Moto engineer working on Android, Rick Osterloh, as he came off the stage. "By the end of that week, Mr. Osterloh was sitting on the corporate jet, flying with Mr. Jha back to California" to talk up Android, according to the NY Times' account.

Jha lopped off Moto's entire Symbian division in weeks, and when Windows Mobile hit delays, punted it entirely. Most impressively, I think, when it came time to pick out the brains of their new phones, Jha rejected a chip that his division had made when he was at Qualcomm, prior to Motorola, in favor of the TI OMAP chip that's in the Droid.

Funny thing about the Droid, while its aesthetic is dominated by a strict functionalism, it was actually even harder-edged before—Verizon asked Motorola to make it rounder and add the softer touch back so it didn't appeal solely to dudes. (Um, good job with that?) I'm just happy for Motorola that they weren't crushed into oblivion by the weight of their own ineptitude and might actually mount a real comeback. There's more to the story over at the Times: [NYT]

The Droid

It's heavy. And the construction makes it feel like one of the substantial phones I've used in a while. It's not like anything you've got in your pocket. The way the screen—the best one on an Android phone yet—ponderously slides up, using only the manual power of your thumb, without the spring assistance our weak fingers are used to, adds to that feeling of weight. At the same time, it doesn't feel like a fatass. While it has a thickness inherent to all sliders, it's not unpleasantly plump. It works with the rest of the phone.

There's also something weirdly refreshing about such a straightforwardly utilitarian design. There's nothing here that's trying to be sexy. Or particularly clean. There's all kinds of lines and marks and bumps and details. It's a strange kind of retro, with the black and the gold accent. It's, well, Imperial.

The 3.7-inch display, packed with pixels, looks simply amazing. Text is ridiculously crisp, thanks to a 854x480 resolution that makes for 267ppi. Seriously, looking at my inbox is kinda making me drool. (The iPhone is 163ppi.) Besides clarity, touch response seems dead on. The keyboard works way better than it looks. It appears flat, but there's a slight bump to every key that, combined with the soft rubber texture, just works. It's way better than the Palm Pre keyboard. The d-pad, I don't think anybody would miss it if it was gone. The touch sensitive keys on the front, I sorta wish were real buttons. (Seriously, what's the point, except to save space?)

I think it's my favorite piece of Android hardware yet, at least until I see the battery life.

Android Two Dot Oh Yeah

The Droid's running a basically stock build of Android 2.0. You'll be able to download Verizon apps later from a special channel in the Android Market, but you get a totally unpolluted phone out of the box.

It's faster, in almost every way possible. (This in part, is thanks to the Droid's ARM Cortex A8 processor, the same kind in the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre.) Apps open quicker, transitions are instant and smooth, scrolling rarely drags in the browser or maps.

Android's grown up. The icons have been redesigned—they're cleaner, more serious, less cartoony. Contacts, as you've seen, improved, with Facebook integration and a new feature called Quick Contact, that lets you ping somebody however you want to. Facebook contact stuff works better than the Pre (which gives you all or nothing options) or the Hero (where you have to manually link each contact), with the option to bring in all of your Facebook contacts, just the people that are also in your Google contacts, or manual linkage.

The cool bedside interface, that turns the Droid into an alarm clock with weather and stuff when you plug into the dock, is apparently something that's just between Motorola and Google, so we might not see it on other Android 2.0 phones. The dashboard interface, that comes up automatically when it's plugged into the car dock, can also be accessed via the Car Home app, and it gives you quick access to contacts, navigation, voice search, search and maps.

Voice is a much bigger part of Android 2.0—holding down the search button for a second engages voice commands for search, navigation (just say "navigate") and other features. Speaking of navigation, Brian has a lot more here on Google's new turn-by-turn service with data layers. It might be the single most significant upgrade in Android 2.0, actually. One thing that's not upgraded? The onscreen keyboard. It's still sorta crummy.

Universal search—thank god. It's amazing to me that the phone OS from the search company fell behind Palm and Apple on this. It's here now, and it can search your contacts, browser history and bookmarks, contacts, apps, your music and YouTube. (Why you have to separately search SMS and email, I don't know.)

The browser, besides being simply faster and working better, has a slightly refreshed UI—multiple windows are managed via a simple text list, for instance. Some of the other benefits, like HTML5 support, are obviously a little hard to easily quantify.

We'll have more for you over the next few days, but for now, just know that yes, it's okay to be excited about this. It may very well be the Droid we were looking for.

First off, Verizon's just confirmed that Droid is a family of phones, and that while this phone is the cornerstone, we should expect more. (AHEM). This is the only one they're announcing now, so anyway: $200 is iPhone 3GS money, so it's good to hear that the specs are top-notch. It's got a 3.7inch screen at 480x854 pixels, a Cortex A8 processor, a 16GB SD card included, Bluetooth, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera and of course, the slide-out keyboard with d-pad. Right, we mostly knew this, so what's new? Well, there's a dock! Ok!

But the software's the real story here, and it's even better than we expected. With a new contacts app, multi-resolution support, a better camera app, and SMS searching , Android 2.0 is front and center, and the Droid will wear it proudly; this is a "Google Experience" device, so don't expect Motoblur here—which given the social networking integration in 2.0, and the refreshed interface, is probably for the best. Verizon wouldn't say whether or not the Android 2.0 would be a Droid exclusive, refusing to confirm that it is, but also refusing to confirm that it isn't. Given that the marketing push for this phone is apparently the biggest in Verizon history, and how weirdly opaque Google's 2.0 release has been so far, I wouldn't doubt that former, at least for a few months.

And remember that Google turn-by-turn nav app rumor? It's totally true. The voice-activated navigation feature will be free, which means if its any good at all, it could conceivably vaporize the entire nav app industry in a matter of months. Google Maps will also have a few new layers on Droid, with Wikipedia, transit and traffic overlays. Google Maps With Navigation will replace the trenchant VZ Navigation, which won't get an Android port. Verizon Visual Voicemail and MyVerizon services will hit Android eventually, but they're gonna take a little time.

Preorders are open now at Verizon's website, but just so you know—Verizon's $200 price is after a mail-in rebate, and a particularly weird one:

Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

Seriously, guys, stop.

Verizon Wireless DROID By Motorola: World's First Smartphone with Android™ 2.0

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – High-speed Web browsing, voice-activated search, customizable large screen, access to thousands of Android applications and hundreds of widgets and the best 3G mobile network in the country: DROID by Motorola arrives on Nov. 6.

Verizon Wireless, the company with the nation's largest wireless 3G broadband network, and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), a pioneer in the mobile industry, today unveiled DROID by Motorola, the first smartphone powered by Android™ 2.0. DROID by Motorola features the brainpower and breakneck speed of a modern smartphone, designed to outperform where other smartphones fall short.

"We're proud to work with Verizon Wireless and Google™ on the first smartphone to feature Android 2.0," said Sanjay Jha, co-chief executive officer of Motorola and chief executive officer of Motorola Mobile Devices. "DROID by Motorola delivers a rich consumer experience with warp-speed Web browsing, a mammoth screen, and Motorola's expertise in design and voice quality. Combined with Android's open, flexible graphical user interface and the power of Verizon Wireless' 3G network, DROID is a smartphone that simply doesn't compromise."

"This is an exciting announcement for Verizon Wireless, as the DROID by Motorola is the first device that we are bringing to market under our ground-breaking strategic partnership with Google," said John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. "DROID by Motorola gives customers a lifestyle device with access to more than 12,000 applications that will help them stay in touch, up to date and entertained, using the best 3G network in the country."

DROID by Motorola has a solid exterior, intelligent interior and is one of the thinnest full-QWERTY slider phones available. It is a no-fuss, high-tech, location-aware, voice-recognizing, over-the-air updating, multi-tasking machine – and it is available just in time for holiday wish lists.

With DROID by Motorola, you can:

· Zip through the Web: Access the Internet at 3G speeds via the nation's largest and most reliable 3G network or from any Wi-Fi hotspot. The multi-window HTML browser with a massive processor delivers the Web the way you expect.

· See it all in cinema-style: View the Web, e-mail, Google Maps™, videos and more in widescreen on a brilliant 3.7" high-resolution screen. Boasting a width of 854 pixels to reduce the need for side-to-side panning and more than 400,000 pixels total, DROID has more than twice that of the leading competitor.

· Run multiple applications at once: Customize your DROID with thousands of applications and hundreds of widgets available on Android Market™. Toggle back and forth between up to six applications at a time to juggle the universe and your apps.

· Perform Google Search™ at the speed of sound: Simply tell DROID what you're looking for using voice-activated search, and it will serve up Google search results based on your location. If you want more, simply type what you're looking for into the search bar on the home screen and DROID will also search content on your phone, such as apps and contacts, and the Web.

· Capture moments: Snap digital camera-quality photos with a 5 megapixel camera loaded with the works, such as a dual-LED flash, AutoFocus and image stabilization, or capture your friend's antics in 16 million colors with DVD-quality video capture and playback. Store it all on the included 16 GB memory card, so you always have it on hand.

· Multi-task like a master: Keep tabs on all your messages with integrated Gmail™ and Exchange e-mail pushed directly to you, but don't let them get in your way. With the handy Android notification panel, go straight to the message or simply ignore it, and get back to the task at hand. And, a smart dictionary learns as you type and automatically includes your contacts.

· Get where you need to go with Google Maps Navigation (Beta): DROID is the first device with Google Maps Navigation, providing turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps. It's powered by Google and connected to the Internet. Use voice shortcuts and simply say "Navigate to [your destination]," and you'll be on your way. See live traffic, use Street View or satellite imagery to view your route, and get access to the most recent maps and business information from Google Maps without ever needing to update your device.

Pre-loaded Applications and Enhancements to Google Mobile Services:

· Google Maps: With layers in Google Maps, view geographic information, such as My Maps, Wikipedia, and transit lines, right on the map.

· Gmail: Multiple accounts support and undo for common operations.

· YouTube™: One-touch recording and playback from homescreen widget or app, one-touch sharing with friends, and the ability to view your own uploaded videos and high-resolution videos.

· Google Talk™: Easily switch between chats, search your chat history, and preview pictures and videos sent by links.

· Android Market: Browse and download applications created by third-party developers.

· Calendar: Ability to see who has R.S.V.P.'d to your meeting invitations.

· Amazon MP3 Store: Download the latest tracks over the air.

· Verizon Wireless Visual Voice Mail: Delete, reply and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions.

Pricing and Availability:

· DROID by Motorola will be available in the United States exclusively at Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online on Friday, Nov. 6, for $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement after a $100 mail-in rebate. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

It looks like the Universal Charging Solution (UCS) has some pretty broad support, from handset manufacturers like LG, Motorola and Samsung to carriers including AT&T and T-Mobile. No word on whether the standard will match the one the GSM Association has been working on, but they're both rallying around MicroUSB, so we'll call it likely for now.

What's sad to me is that, according to the source, this standard could save 51,000 tons of waste if it were in place today. Considering all phone chargers do exactly the same thing, it's pretty ridiculous there wasn't a standard in place before.

Participating carriers and handset makers should fully adopt the UCS by 2012. Hopefully America hops on board before then. [Reuters via Electronista]

This leak (or whatever it is) confirms a lot of things we already knew: The Droid will be packing Android 2.0 (Eclair), has a 3.7-inch touchscreen, 5MP camera (with 4x zoom and autofocus), blah blah blah. It also will have a "Notification Panel," which could be a light like the alert light BlackBerrys have had for years (that's not a dig, it's an extremely useful feature), a 1400mAh battery (rated at 385 minutes usage, 270 hours standby), pretty extensive audio and video codec support, a video camera, microUSB port, and 3.5mm headphone jack. It's also listed as having the WebKit HTML 5 browser with Flash 10 support, though the Flash is noted to be arriving sometime in 2010. Plus, it comes with a 16GB microSDHC card for media or whatever.

This handset is shaping up to be a mighty impressive piece of hardware. Check back with us in the coming days for more info as we get it. [Boy Genius Report]

Motorola sent out a teaser for their upcoming Verizon Android phone, the Droid, and it uses Verizon's new tagline, "In a world of doesn't, Droid does." (For the record, thanks to Verizon for not saying "iDoesn't."). But the mailer also uses this weird scary monster motif, with a glowing red eye from some kind of hell-creature glaring out at you, and saying "the day of Droid is approaching." I've seen Battlestar Galactica, Motorola, and you're scaring the crap out of me. Unfortunately, there's not any new information on the handset to be found, so this scary promotional tool ends up here in Remainders. [BGR]

Did you guys know the Orionid meteor shower is tonight? I bet you did. You're a smart bunch. I bet I don't even have to tell you that the Orionid meteor shower is actually caused by the Earth passing through the tail of Halley's Comet (which flew by a long time ago, and isn't visible). You probably also know that the best time for viewing is between 1AM and dawn tonight (early early Wednesday morning), and that the best possible time is around 6AM EST (3AM PST). Since you knew all that, I guess this whole thing was a waste of time, which is why it's in Remainders. [Space.com]

Stupid novelty gadgets from Japan are a dime a dozen, and these earbuds are no different. Shaped like a screw, a banana, sushi, and a cat's foot (?), these 'buds don't deserve a full post—but I love how the drawn models look so despondent. Just imagine the art department responsible for this: Somebody made a decision that even their own drawings would be sad to cram half a plastic banana into their also-drawn ears. [CrunchGear]

Disney, whose video sales have sunk along with everyone else's, have come up with a new strategy called Keychest that's actually pretty shrewd, since it accounts for the expansion of viewing platforms beyond just the TV (computer, phone, PMP, etc). Keychest would basically mean that the purchase of a video would include access to that video in the cloud, on any device. So if you buy Up on DVD, it'll come with a code so you can download it at iTunes, and a code so you can stream it from Comcast. It's not a bad idea, but it's been done before: Industry leaders have been working on the very similar DECE project for years now, and it hasn't come to fruition yet. Keychest? Nice idea, but too old to deserve its own post. [WSJ]

That's some high praise right there. Apparently it's slightly thicker than the iPhone 3GS, but is still the thinnest QWERTY-slider they've seen. They also say its TI OMAP3430 processor and 3.7-inch capacitive touchscreen are fastest, and most responsive they've used on an Android phone. "It makes the CLIQ looks like a child's toy."

My only concern is that these shots make the screen look kinda dim. That could be the flash, or maybe the screen wasn't at max brightness, who knows. Click through for BGR's full impressions and image gallery. [Boy Genius Report]

Also: Verizon's 30-second Droid TV Spot Attacking the iPhone

The Motorola Cliq is the Android OS on Motorola hardware. Like Palm before it, Motorola decided that Windows Mobile 6.5/7 would be too little, too late to combat the iPhone menace. But instead of going in house and creating something from scratch, Motorola decided to take an already stable OS and build social networking features directly into the interface. So yes, it's basically an Android phone; but it's an Android phone++.

Motorola's Cliq delivers on its social networking promise quite admirably, even if there are a few design quirks that prevent the experience from being perfect. And although it's a little sluggish on the hardware side—as sluggish as any of the other Android phones out there now, that is—the fact that it has a good physical keyboard and solid Motorola hardware behind it makes the Cliq a very interesting contender in the Android world.

The Hardware is solid, except when it's not

Moto is no stranger to building its own phones, so you'd expect some smart hardware know-how to go into Cliq's design. That's only kinda true. Everything on the phone is where you'd expect it to be and buttons are more-or-less in acceptable locations, but there's a looseness in the slide-out keyboard that's more irritating the more I play with it. I can't tell if it's because the slider doesn't quite lock into place like it should—there's a little give in both the open and closed positions—but the "Oreo-ing" is really distracting. It's not as if the screen portion will pop off, it's just an annoying looseness in the phone that makes you feel like they didn't quite solve the puzzle of fitting everything in place.

A hardware keyboard is always a welcome thing to have, and the Cliq's behaves well. There's enough spacing in each of the keys that it's easy to type, but not too much that it's occupying a lot of space. There could have been some better arrangement of symbol keys (the underscore is buried under a symbols menu), but that's just being nitpicky. Overall, it's a solid keyboard that's quick to enter data with.

Other build quirks

The wobbliness of the slider means that you need to grip only the bottom (keyboard) part of the phone when you're taking a photo, or else the screen will slide open and you'll probably drop your phone. Also, Motorola decided to make the power switch flush with the right side of the phone so even Daredevil would have a hard time finding it by touch. Since the power button also lets you toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode and GPS, that's a bad design.

You have to open up the battery cover to shove an up-to 32GB microSD card in there, but since you'll rarely replace that (use a microUSB to transfer files), it's not a huge deal. I do like the fact that there's no cover on the microSD slot, as well as the presence of the now-obligatory vibrate toggle on the left side of the phone. Its 3.5mm headphone jack being located directly on the top of the phone kinda screws up the lines a bit, but I'd rather a slightly uglier phone than not having a 3.5mm jack.

Power and battery

Because the Cliq runs the same processor as the current Android phones now—like the Hero and the MyTouch 3G—there's not a whole lot of performance difference between the devices. They're all kinda slow. Not unusably slow, but transitions and animations don't pop immediately. And this sluggishness might be part of the reason why interacting with the touchscreen isn't as fluid a process as it could be, and why sometimes when you're swiping between emails or tweets, the page will pop back into place and you have to swipe a second time.

As for the battery life, you can pretty much imagine how much use you'll get out of an always-connected device that gets pushed emails, tweets and Facebook updates all day. Even if you don't make a lot of calls, you'll have to charge the device every night. And if you do do a lot of texting and emailing and calling and tweeting, you'd better get an external charger.

The main drain seems to be both the push and the fact that you're using the phone a lot to keep up with everything that's happening on your social networks. Motorola built a double-edged sword on that one; people want to use it a lot for checking status updates, but in turn the 1420 mAh battery runs out in less than a day.

Hardware features we like

There are a couple nice touches that we're appreciative of, such as the blinking light on the front for notifications, which has been on BlackBerries for a while. Great if you don't get a lot of emails or if you don't follow a lot of people. You can also wake up the phone using the facebuttons, not just the power toggle, so two quick menu button presses will get you to the home screen immediately.

Having a D pad is going to be useful in the future when Android developers start making games that take advantage of it, but you can use it now in NES/SNES emulators. And the camera is a beefy 5-megapixel autofocus, which produces decent photos compared to other Android phones. Plus, call quality is pretty good, something Motorola has managed to do well even when their software has faltered.

Software

Seeing as Android has been available for more than a while, and everyone should be familiar with what it does, I'm going to focus on the Cliq-specific sections. Suffice it to say that it can do everything other Android phones can, including downloading OTA Amazon MP3s and accessing all the apps in the Marketplace. The most important of Motorola's additions are the home screen widgets, so we'll start there.

The home screen widgets

The four widgets of note are the status widget, the messaging widget, the happenings widget and the news/RSS widget. The news widget is self-explanatory, and really cool that a phone would have a built-in RSS reader right on the home screen, but the others are a little bit trickier. The status widget lets you update your "status" to any of your social networking sites, like Facebook or Twitter. The messages widget consolidates ALL your 1:1 messaging, like emails, SMS, DMs on Twitter or private messages on Facebook. The happenings is a feed of other people's status updates on your social networks.

Messaging Widget
I don't know why, but it's very satisfying to be able to swipe through your emails directly from the home screen, quickly deleting or replying with just one tap. The problem comes from the way it's implemented and the lack of screen space, because you can't see the recipients list to see if you're the only person address to in an email, nor can you do a reply all if there are multiple people. And it doesn't tell you if you have an attachment.

Basically it's just a small window to your email, and you'll have to actually open up the traditional email app to do any communication beyond the basics. And there's also a full-blown Messaging APP, which consolidates all your accounts like the widget does.

Happenings Widget
This is where your all your social networks are rolled into one big feed. Again, it's a time saver to have all these updates in one place and being able to swipe through them, though sometimes you get way too many updates to realistically do so. What we would like is if there was an option to customize which networks displayed in the widget, so we could, say, have only Twitter and leave out Facebook. Right now it's an all or nothing affair, and you have to go into the Happenings app to see everything in list form and to be able to view only one network at a time.

The widget does allow you to directly interact and respond to people's updates, so you can comment on people's walls or do an @reply to someone's tweet. All you have to do is start typing in a particular section and some menu option will pop up, prompting you with context-specific actions you can do.

News Widget
The RSS widget behaves pretty much the same way as the previous two, allowing you to swipe through news items like you would in a standard RSS reader. Motorola was kind enough to bundle a few types of RSS feeds together, and Gizmodo is part of the Technology one. Good choice dudes.

Nice touches

By avoiding the creation of an entire operation system from scratch, the Motorola engineers had time on their hands to really think about the user experience, and it definitely shows in all these small touches and shortcuts they put in.

• There are some slick transition animations when you open up widgets and apps, which are quick enough to not be distracting, but slow enough to distract you for a second while your program is loading
• Faces are fetched and attached to your contacts automatically, and you can choose whether you want to grab the images from Google or Facebook. This way you can always have some kind of picture for a person when they call you for easy recognition
• The MotoBlur account you have to create on setup backs up some of your settings so that you can re-load it in the event of phone theft
• Speaking of phone stealing, there's a free service online that's similar to MobileMe that you can use to locate your phone from the web
• There's a five panel home screen. Eh? Ehh??
• The call button got moved to a soft button, eliminating the need for two hard buttons on the outside of the phone. You also get a contacts button instead of a end call button, since you don't need to hang up if you're not in a call.
• There's visual voicemail
• People's faces everywhere, and you can see their latest status updates when a call is initiated
• You can manually link contacts together, like on Palm's webOS, in case the phone doesn't automatically recognize that Frucci is the same Adam Frucci you have in your Gmail
• A self help widget is there when you get the phone, walking you through a few features you might not see
• There are shortcuts everywhere, which would usually be a bad thing since you have to poke around to find them, but they're implemented in such a way that it actually makes sense
• You can type on the home screen to find a contact. This makes sense in the Moto Cliq world since the Cliq is a person-centric device, whereas on other phones it would make more sense to bring up a Google search instead
• And typing in the applications tray searches through your apps

Gripes

The software's not flawless, however, and you will run into some minor annoyances even with all the niceties.
• Yahoo Mail only works over 3G, not Wi-Fi. This most likely has to do with some deal or legal restriction, but it doesn't make the decision less annoying. If we had to choose between Yahoo only on 3G and no Yahoo, we'd pick the 3G
• There isn't really desktop syncing for your contacts or calendar. You can send movies and music and photos over the microUSB connection, but Motorola really wants you to put your contacts on either Gmail or a social network and pull them down that way

You don't get a lot of fine-grained control over accounts. (Yes, I made you wait this long for a pun on the top photo.) For example, you can't tell your phone to only pull down contacts from Gmail and not Facebook, or choose to display only your Twitter and MySpace contacts at once. It's basically all or just one. More account customizability would be the number one software target we'd ask Motorola's team to aim for, and something we're eager to see in Blur version 1.5.

The Whole Experience

Like we said in the hardware section, the major thing holding back the Cliq from being a fantastic phone is the processor. The animations are smooth, the UI touches are smart and the social networking stuff is useful; we just wish we could have a bit more account customization, do all of that on faster hardware. Once Motorola gets the Blur platform onto a more powerful phone and works through some of the software quirks we noticed, they're going to have a really good Android phone on their hands.

Is this the phone that Motorola needs to bring it back into the smartphone race? It could be. They were smart enough to know that just doing another Android phone wasn't enough in itself, so they pulled together and created all this social networking glue to bind the experience together. It's cohesive enough to call the Cliq a different experience from other, similar devices like the Sprint HTC Hero, and is a pretty damn good first step in a possible Motorola comeback. [Motorola]

Social networking features are quite good

Lots of little touches that improve on the base Android platform

Hardware keyboard

Decent hardware except for the Oreo-like keyboard action

It's an Android phone at heart, which means you'll either like it or dislike it, based on how you feel about the platform

A slow-ish CPU makes the experience weaker than it could be

The first offers 1,000 minutes, 1,000 texts and 30MB of data for $30. That seems alright, but for $45, you get unlimited anytime minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data.

The catch? You probably won't be using much data on their disappointing line of phones that all sell for $100 without a contract—though a "Samsung 451" (a model number that brings up a Samsung set top box) promises full QWERTY and certainly implies a bit more functionality. The LG Slider 290, which doesn't handle much beyond email, is your other higherish-end option.

So would you buy a wireless plan from Walmart? I certainly would, were I able to cheat the system with a more attractive phone of my own.

Walmart To Launch Straight Talk Exclusively, Nationwide

No-Contract Wireless Plans Starting at $30 a Month

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (Oct. 14, 2009) – Dedicated to providing families affordable wireless solutions, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) announces today it will launch Straight Talk, a new solution in no-contract cellular, exclusively at more than 3,200 Walmart stores nationwide starting October 18, 2009. Straight Talk will bring to the market a new low price for no-contract wireless service with two prepaid plans now available to customers nationwide at $30 and $45 a month. Straight Talk will only be available in Walmart stores and online at www.Walmart.com and www.StraightTalk.com.

The average U.S. adult spends $78 on his or her cell phone bill to receive 1000 minutes a month.* By switching to the $30 Straight Talk plan, for example, the average 1,000 minutes-per-month consumer could save more than $500 per year and still be on a reliable nationwide network.

To help drive down no-contract wireless pricing for customers, Walmart will launch Straight Talk providing customers the following two options:

* Straight Talk "All You Need" 30-day Plan that includes the following for only $30 a month:
o 1,000 minutes, 1,000 texts and 30MB of mobile web access
o Nationwide coverage
o 411 Information calls at no extra charge

* Straight Talk's Unlimited 30-day Plan that includes the following for $45 a month:
o Unlimited minutes, unlimited text and unlimited mobile web access
o Nationwide coverage
o Unlimited 411 Information calls at no extra charge

"It has been very encouraging to see the excitement and response to the Straight Talk pilot in 234 stores that began last summer at Walmart," said Greg Hall, vice president of Media Services, Walmart U.S. "In light of the savings customers continue to need, we have worked very quickly to extend this offering to all of our Walmart customers nationwide, and just before the holidays."

Consumers may refill their monthly balances by buying refill cards at Walmart, or by registering online at www.Walmart.com or www.StraightTalk.com. Also available at Walmart are a range of Straight Talk phone products to suit different needs, from the entry-level LG 220 flip phone at $39.98, to the LG Slider 290 at $79.98 to the Samsung 451 QWERTY keyboard phone at $99.88.

More information about Straight Talk no-contract wireless services is available at www.Walmart.com or www.StraightTalk.com.

Straight Talk is an exclusive Walmart service developed with TracFone Wireless, Inc. TracFone Wireless currently sells TracFone and NET10 prepaid wireless phones and airtime at Walmart stores and online at www.walmart.com.

* Source: Nielsen Mobile Bill Panel Data

About Walmart

Every week, millions of customers visit Walmart stores, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam's Club locations across America or log on to its online store at www.walmart.com. The company and its Foundation are committed to a philosophy of giving back locally. Walmart (NYSE: WMT) is proud to support the causes that are important to customers and associates right in their own neighborhoods, and last year gave more than $378 million to local communities in the United States. More information about Walmart can be found by visiting www.walmartstores.com.

About TracFone Wireless

TracFone Wireless, Inc. is a subsidiary of America Movil (NYSE: AMX, Nasdaq: AMOV) and has more no-contract cell phone customers than any other carrier in the U.S.

What's not surprising is that Motorola is dead last. Up until their Android Cliq they really didn't have much going for them—and neither did Palm, until their Pre. So our guess is that these ratings will look a little different next year with Palm moving up a slot or two, and Motorola pulling out of the shame spot.

Motorola doesn't do too bad on the dumbphone ratings, on the other hand.

Also, LG? [JD Power]

• RIM BlackBerry Curve 2, before Black Friday
• RIM BlackBerry Storm 2, before Black Friday
• HTC Imagio, on October 20
• Samsung Saga 2, early November
• Samsung Omnia 2, early November
• Pantech TXT8030 Razzle, early October
• Casio C731 Rock, mid-November
• Casio C741 Brigade, late October
• Motorola V860 Barrage, "soon" (it's already available online in Verizon)
• LG VX8575 Chocolate Touch, first or second week of November

On the Android front:
• HTC Desire, which will be available before Black Friday. Note: This may be the Verizon Android phone sighted today, though Boy Genius says that might be called the Hero.

• Motorola Tao or Droid (possibly the phone currently codenamed Sholes?) will also be available before Black Friday.

The phone has floated around under the names "Sholes," "Tao" and "Droid," the last of which seems to be the name most people are betting on. Phonedog says the Android device also packs a second 430MHz C64x+ DSP + ISP (Image Signal Processor), plus a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU, giving this thing a bit of muscle. The phone is rounded otu with a sliding keyboard under its surface, 16 gigs of storage space (with MicroSD for even more room), and a 3.5mm audio jack, all in an enclosure that's just 13.7 mm thick.

The device is rumored for a December 1 launch, meaning we probably won't see it until the new year, but this seems like a promising smartphone contender in the Verizon lineup (BGR also seems to think a keyboard-free version will be announced next year as well). [PhoneDog via Android Central]

In fact, while the 10 biggest cable operators have deployed 16.7 settop boxes with integrated CableCards to date, they've only issued 443,000 standalone CableCards. And during the last two years, full CableCard devices have been installed 38x more often than CableCards alone.

(I'm also betting that the percentage of population that orders more than one CableCard for dual/quad tuning is greater than the percentage of population who orders more than one cable box, which means the CableCard-exclusive population may be even smaller than it seems...but I could be wrong.)

It's tough to tell why CableCards haven't been more popular. Then again, limited VoD options and a lack of consumer education might both have something to do with it. [Multichannel News via EngadgetHD]