The Verizon Droid does have a release date! The Verizon Droid phone will be released on October 30,2009. You can find that out by going to the Droid Does website (www.droiddoes.com) and decoding the timer at the bottom of the page. You can also enter in your e-mail to be notified once Verizon actually releases it.
Most of the features of the Droid have been posted on the Droid Does website. The important features that the Droid includes, and the iPhone doesn’t are:
Android 2.0 Operating System
QWERTY Keyboard
Multi-tasking
Night shots
Open development
More customizeable
Widgets
Interchangeable battery
I’m really looking forward to October 30. The Droid really sounds like it will be a great iPhone killer! What do you think about it? I haven’t actually tried Android before, but now that it’s coming to Verizon I’ll finally get the chance to try it. Remember, this is Android 2.0 so it’s going to be better than the current Android OS in all the other popular Android phones!
Verizon recently aired a Droid Does commercial during the Yankees-Angels game on Saturday. This commercial does a good job of making the iPhone look bad. I really liked this commercial, and I hope that the Droid Does commercial pushes Apple to improve their iPhone and make it more open! Obviously Verizon hasn’t heard of jailbroken iPhones, because if they did then they would know that we can already get most of the features by jailbreaking. You can watch the Droid Does commercial here.
I am kind of disappointed about this commercial because it means that the iPhone will not be coming to Verizon any time soon. I do look forward to seeing what Verizon comes out with. Anyone else excited about the Verizon Droid? It really does have the potential to be an iPhone killer, especially since it’s being launched on one of America’s most reliable network.
Verizon Droid Features
Here is a list of some features of the Droid that Verizon has listed on their website.
Video
Tunes
10,000+ Apps
The Network
Multitasking
High speed
Hi-Res
5 megapixels
Android 2.0
Speech Recognition
Notification Panel
Directions
You can sign up to be notified once Verizon launches the Droid. No release date has been announced, the DroidDoes.com website just says “Coming Soon”.
During tonight’s Yankee’s/Angel’s game, Verizon aired their “i Don’t” ad that was clearly aimed at making the iPhone look bad. To be honest, Verizon made some excellent points. The iPhone is missing a lot of simple features that can be found in other phones like the Palm Pre.
i Don’t have a real keyboard
i Don’t run simultaneous apps
i Don’t take night shots
i Don’t allow open development
i Don’t customize.
i Don’t run widgets
i Don’t have interchangeable batteries.
Everything iDon’t.
Most of the things that Verizon mentioned already do exist on the iPhone, but only with a jailbreak. If you are an iPhone user you can jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 and customize just about everything on your iPhone.
Today Motorola announced their new Motorola Cliq smartphone at the Mobilize conference. This smartphone is powered by Android, and uses Motorola’s own interface dubbed as Moto Blur.
The Motorola Cliq has a slide down keyboard, 3G/HSDPA and WiFi, 5.0 megapixel auto focus camera, full HTML browser, and more. The Moto Blur interface syncs all your pictures, e-mails, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace messages and displays them all in one screen. Moto Blur also continuously updates and backs up your data.
With all the continuous update the Motorola Cliq does I would imagine that it has a short battery life and would be laggy, but it’s too early to judge this right now. The Motorola Cliq will be available in Fall 2009 on T-Mobile and it will be available in white and platinum. No pricing information has been released yet. Head on over to Motorola.com to see a full gallery and more information on the Motorola Cliq.
The HTC Hero is coming to Sprint on October 11th! Well, actually HTC and Sprint haven’t made any official announcements yet but HTC has revealed this on their website. Go to http://www.htc.com/ca/faq_detail.aspx?p_id=288&act=um, and you’ll notice a page titled HTC Hero (Sprint).
The October 11 HTC Hero release date has not been confirmed yet, but a reputable forum member on the XDA-Developer forum posted the following proof picture:
Are you looking forward to the HTC Hero launch? I am! This may be the first Android phone I’m getting.
An iPhone hacker, Charlie Miller will release the world’s first iPhone virus today. He discovered an SMS hack 6 weeks ago and reported it to Apple, but Apple has yet to release a patch. Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner will both explain and reveal their iPhone SMS exploit some time today at the Blackhat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas.
iPhone SMS hack details
How does the SMS hack work? Firstly, this hack does not requirreleae the victim to download any file. The attacker only needs to know the victim’s phone number. Miller says the attack is enabled by a serious memory corruption in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. For the attack to work, an attacker must send hundreds of SMS control messages (different from regular SMS messages) and only the initial SMS will be seen. This attack works on both the iPhone and the Andoid. What does the iPhone SMS hack do? This hack can allow the attacker to make calls from your iPhone, steal your data, send text messages, and also spread the attack to other iPhones in your address book.
How to recognize and avoid the iPhone virus
If you get a strange text message containing any square box, even if it’s from a recognized number you may be the victim of the iPhone virus.
You have two choices:
Put your iPhone in Airplane mode: Go to Settings -> Airplane Mode and slide the button to Off.
Hold down the power button, and slide to turn your iPhone off.
The only thing we can do now is wait for Apple to release a patch. We expect Apple to release the iPhone 3.1 update by September, but hopefully this exploit causes them to release it earlier. iPhone Forensics expert, Jonathan Zdziarski and iPhone hacker p0sixninja from the Chonic Dev Team recently tweeted about the possibility to release their own patch for this vulnerability (only available through a jailbreak). I’m hoping Chronic Dev Team will be able to release a fix for this as this will show Apple that they are wrong about the jailbreaking community. Apple dislikes jailbreaking and is trying to make it illegal. Will the Chronic Dev Team release a patch first or will Apple? We will keep you updated on this and also post a guide on how to patch once a patch is released! Subscribe to our RSS feed or bookmark this post for updates. Do you think it’s vey irresponsible for Apple to not have released a patch yet? Leave a comment.