On the other hand, I found O2′s marketing for the Pre in Europe solid, both the Pixi and the Pre received promotional discounts by Amazon and Walmart and at least on Amazon, the Pre is currently outselling the Droid. Palm will present their figures in a few weeks (their fiscal quarter ended in November).

http://wblg319.blogspot.com/2009/12/motorola-18-million-droids-and-225.html

Droid Does? It ‘Does’ most everything for me. Sure, it would be nice to have simultaneous voice and data like I have on the iPOS, but I’m much happier that I’m always in network coverage and have never dropped a call in the 3+ weeks I’ve had it than the number of dropped calls I would have had on the iPOS. The battery life has been good on the Droid. Sure, it’s flat by or before the end of the day but on some of my iPOS’s I had they were draining faster than they were charging (and yes, I did ‘reset to factory defaults’ and reconfigure several times over to remove the problems that just seemed to crop up on the thing). I like the fact that the Android OS will allow me to move to another piece of handset hardware in the future and not have to start all over in setup of it, just point it to my Google contacts. Verizon clearly has a much better understanding of the business consumer. I liked (not) the fact that the iPOS was the only phone AT&T wouldn’t let you buy insurance on. Isn’t that nice of Apple that they then get to sell another phone at the full price! It also never sat well with me that the idiots at the ‘Genius Bar’ would ask you ‘how often do you turn off your phone?’, meaning ‘our OS is nice and buggy with lots of memory leaks that need to be drained by a reboot even though we tell the world how wonderful it is’. The Droid has seemed to have slowed a little over the days between complete battery discharge / recharge cycles, but nowhere near the rate of the iPOS.

All in all, I like the Droid, and for a first release (OK, it’s V2.0 overall) on the Motorola hardware, it’s a long ways ahead of the stability of the iPOS at the year and a half point on the market it was when I was hoodwinked into buying into it.

Dave

Oh, and for the record, I don’t think you can compare it to the IPhone…or call it an IPhone killer…very similar product, but this phone is in a category of it’s own. Sorry to be so clique, but it’s been a looong time since I’ve been so satisfied with a cell/smart phone.

Wouldn’t surprise me if it hit 1.25 million by the end of the year…I’ve already set three employees and my Mom up with one! (Wife and Kids are converting next week)… with the techno ads, they should’ve borrowed from Star Trek… “Droid – Resistance is Futile”.

Clearly I’m too old to be attempting slang anymore.

sev.

One question for you: how do you see the Android’s lack of secured Activesync support affecting corporate sales? Without secured support, it seems like a non-starter. A shame, because I know corporate IT techs and users alike were geeks about the Droid.

TIA,

sev.

It won’t be. Android itself is the iPhone killer, if folks must use that term. Not that the iPhone will be killed, but if you’re looking for the smart phone platform that will dominate, Android is pretty close to already being a foregone conclusion. Look at Dell… they struck a deal with China Mobile to push a Dell-made Android phone out to some of their 500-million customers… Apple’s still trying to put together a deal with the #3 carrier in China. Android is on three our of four of the US carriers, and AT&T won’t hold out long. It’s in Europe, India, South America, etc.

And the phone makers themselves are behind it. Every cell phone manufacturer except Apple, RIM, and Palm are doing something with Android (Nokia hasn’t annouced a phone yet, but they are working on a cellular internet tablet running Android). Motorola has 350 people working on Android. HTC has it on half of their phones, not just the “iPhone killer” class. Sony’s about to deliver… so are other CE companies like Panasonic, and I already mentioned Dell… and they’re not the only computer company jumping in.

As in the PC biz, Apple will wind up one proprietary solution among hundreds running “the standard”.

Then, at least for the geeks in the crowd, there’s the big issue with Apple’s application censorship, the lack of the ability to customize, etc. There’s enough there to keep me away from the iPhone.

The interesting things is that both of these factors ruled out iPhones for me, even without having to consider the hardware. And both of those… the nature of Verizon, and the nature of the Android OS, were just as positive as the negatives on the iPhone. I had pretty much been waiting the last year, since my Treo died, for Verizon to offer some kind of Android phone.

But the DROID completely rocks. Sure, some rough edges so far… a few bugs, a few mis/missing features, etc. But keep in mind, the iPhone had to get its first major software upgrade before it was even officially a smartphone (eg, capable of running 3rd party apps). That was just 2008… some pundits speak of the iPhone as if it’s been around forever.

You do get the option of a contract, when purchasing, but no choice means fewer sales.