First images of Droid 2 arrive online
A trio of Droid 2 pictures have arrived online showing the phone looking production ready. Will this be Verizon's next Android handset?
A handful of images showing a Motorola Droid 2 ready for production appeared online Thursday. The handset appears to retain much of the look and feel of the original Droid, but it shows new and different elements.
From what we can tell, Moto has changed the four buttons across the bottom of the display to be more in line with what the company has been putting on its recent device. The most notable difference comes when you slide the handset open: gone is the directional pad on the right side in favor of a more spacious keyboard with slightly raised buttons.
Otherwise, the remaining changes are subtle and harder to recognize. As pointed out by Droid Life, the Droid 2 isn't about cosmetic differences so much as changes to the internal hardware.
Like its predecessor, the Droid 2 has a 3.7-inch touch screen and a 5-megapixel camera. Whereas the first Droid was powered by a 550MHz OMAP processor, the Droid 2 is said to clock at 750MHz. The new handset also comes with an 8GB MicroSD card to complement the 8GB of internal storage.
We don't know anything about its ROM situation, though I assume it will be at least 512MB. This looks to be a step in the right direction, but it's not quite up to par with handsets like Verizon's Droid Incredible or Sprint's HTC EVO 4G.
The Droid 2 comes preinstalled with Android 2.1, but with a slightly different version of Motorola's MOTOBLUR. It's suggested, however, that the Motoblur experience is not quite as "intrusive" as it is on phones like T-Mobile's Cliq and Cliq XT.
Droid Life refers to Wi-Fi tethering, although it doesn't go into specifics. Based on the finished look of the device I believe this phone is nearing its release and will likely miss Android 2.2 "Froyo." Depending on how deeply Motorola sinks its hooks into this phone, an update might not be all that far off.