Over the weekend Verizon unleashed its marketing campaign for its upcoming Motorola Droid smartphone, pointing out some of the iPhone’s biggest flaws on prime time television as well as on the website DroidDoes.com. The phone, which will be the first to run Android 2.0 and is sporting some heavy duty specs, may be a viable challenger to Apple’s iPhone dominance. Thing is, the Droid still isn’t officially announced yet, and we still don’t have a release date.
But we do have some hints: DroidDoes.com features a mysterious countdown timer that consists of a bunch of nonsensical symbols swirling by. Through some trickery (namely changing your computer clock or looking at the site’s config.xml file), it’s pretty easy to see what it’s counting down to. When the site launched on Saturday the countdown was going to October 30, 12:00 AM CST. Sometime today, that changed: the clock is now counting down to October 28, at 12:00 AM CST. Or 48 hours earlier than it used to be.
Of course, it’s possible that October 28 is the day Verizon is going to actually announce the phone, with the actual release coming a bit later (remember, the “Droid Does” ad ends by saying it comes out in November). Or maybe we’ll be holding this thing two days earlier than we thought.
Update: We’ve heard from a tipster who claims to have knowledge of the launch that Droid will be released either November 6 or 7. We’ve been hearing similar rumors before so this is certainly plausible.
Thanks to Christopher Daggett for working this out.
October 30th is a Friday. They may have just decided that they could get a better PR blitz if the announcement was made on a Wednesday rather than a Friday.
“first viable challenger to Apple’s iPhone dominance”? — that’s a Blackberry (at least here in NYC)
its just another piece of hardware with android, how is it the first viable challenger? the hardware sure as hell isnt revolutionary
and any left-handed person who sees droid automatically gets anxiety from looking at the gold dial on the right side of the keypad
It’s the “first” because it actually has good hardware specs. I love Android but all curcent phones on the market are a bit slow, to say the least. This thing has a similar processor as the 3GS, and it has a large (3.7″) high-res (~800×400) screen. Sounds awesome to me.
One of Apple’s genius moves was to limit multi-tasking. I have an Android phone (mytouch), and the phone easily gets bogged down after I run a couple of apps (multitasking). For Verizon’s sake, I hope the improved specs will make this a non-issue. I suspect not, though.
That’s a good point, I didn’t even think of that. I sure hope the phone can handle multitasking, the Droidoes.com website is headlining it.
Are lefties retarded or something?
I’m left handed and I don’t.
Left handed here and I see no problem with the D-Pad right where it’s at. How many lefties do you know of who move the mouse to the left side of the keyboard? I can only think of a few of my fellows who do.
I thought Verizon was in talks to bring the iPhone to its network in a year or two? But this is a pretty big anti-iPhone campaign…
I don’t get why everyone says that the current anti-iPhone campaign means that Verizon will never want/get the iPhone. I think the more likely logic behind is is that Verizon doesn’t want you to buy a current iPhone (from AT&T). It’s not like the issues that they raise aren’t things that people and Apple have already thought about. If anything, I’d venture to say that Verizon’s current anti-iPhone ad will help make the 4G (which could come out on Verizon LTE network) a stronger competitor against the up and coming phones. Verizon doesn’t really care which smartphone you use – they just want the extra revenue the data plans generate.
fact is, in a year… the iphone will not be able to break out from the crowd of smart phones… whether they be android, maemo, webos or whatever else. apple have had their time in the sun for the last 2+ years and rightfully so. they came out with a gamechanger. cannot deny it. but we are now talking about 2010 and beyond and this is a time where their will be many powerful smart phones par with or better than the iphone.
apple’s relationship with at&t needs to open up. the stranglehold needs to end. but no matter… apple will be contending with their new larger device… the iPad or whatever they will call it and I bet you that this will not be tethered to at&t. whether it will be popular or not… we shall see. i personally like larger touch screen devices but understand that they are not for the masses.
being a verizon customer, i am thrilled to have an option to upgrade to a cutting edge device. whther that be by motorola or htc…. or samsung… does not matter much. point is, iphone aint the only game in town now. that’s a good thing for the industry.
We’ll have to monitor the clock daily from here on out
Wow! The suspense is killing me.
Burn the walled garden down!
I am interested in this thing I can’t lie, I’d like to see a solid iPhone competitor on Verizon no less.
http://droiddoesnt.com
http://www.droiddoesnot.com
http://www.droidwont.com
this is hilarious
the anti-droid phone websites are popping up like crazy
does anyone else have any other sites?
i can understand having fun with this campaign…
like with http://droiddo.es
but those sites you mention… that is kind of sad….. serious attempts to discount an iphone competing product as if apple never has dared to shit on other products? give it a rest. leave the marketing strategies to apple. but they will need a new upgraded phone released to really forge ahead of the new crop of android (and windows) devices coming out. at least put a better camera w/flash in the next version.
Yawn…..sorry….can’t really relate to this….excuse me, my iPhone is ringing….
“…pointing our some of the iPhone’s biggest flaws…? If those are the iPhone’s biggest flaws, I am rushing out to buy some Apple stock. Oh! Wait! Too late!
Awesome. I love phones that give you a 70/30 chance of actually receiving the call.
Guess you got lucky this time.
It better be a viable competitor to the iPhone or soon we will see a full monopoly on the mobile market.
I think they need to roughly 1,000,000,000 more iPhones before they start closing in on monoploy territory.
Thats not a half bad idea…
HAH, give them 6 months and they’ll easily pass that..China’s going to pack on some serious stats for the next year or so.
Haha Genious Parody. Wished i would of thought that one.
The craze is on. I cant wait either i almost picked up the htc hero from sprint but slapped myself when i pictured myself calling their customer service. Been a long time customer of verizon but jumped ship for the iphone.
WRONG! CyanogenRom phones will be the first phones to run Android 2.0!
Did I miss the Arrington’s post about Google Voice being down?
Verizon’s Droid page is not working on my iPhone.. Anyone else noticing this? If this is true that would be classic marketing, idoesnt display droid webpage.
Your iPhone doesn’t support flash, that’s why. DroidDoes!
Droid…., Clear to land…!!!!!
“Through some trickery (namely changing your computer clock or looking at the site’s config.xml file), it’s pretty easy to see what it’s counting down to.”
Figuring out the time left on that countdown timer required no such trickery. Ten seconds tops and you should be able to identify what symbol is standing in for 9. All you have to do is wait for the second to last digit to change – that identifies when you’ve made the drop from say 20 to 19. The rest of the code simply makes itself apparent thereafter as it ticks down…8…7…6… Twenty seconds and you have the whole symbol set. See? Easy.
No need to over-complicate things, TC & Jason. The various camps of fan-people that have been duking it out on tech blogs this past week over the Droid’s marketing thus far (Apple vs anti-Apple, Verizon vs those who’ve been shafted by ‘the network’, nerds vs ‘normal people’) have complicated this situation enough, thank you.
I think the timer is the only rational thing I’ve seen out of all the noise around this thus far.
Tick tock.
Well, sure. But that takes some brainpower, or at least patience. The other ways are much quicker.
I’m just razzin ya, but thanks for dignifying that with a reply.
I, for one, have been an iPhone holdout, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how this thing handles.
If I owned an iPhone, I would look at this as a good thing rather than a threat. Yes, we want competition. That is, unless you want to keep paying more.
In fact, the better the Droid turns out, the better off iphone owners will be. Lower prices, more open marketplace, and probably another carrier to choose from (Wimax iPhone on Sprint, who knows???).
something tells me we’ll see an Android Wimax device first though.
The ad is too geeky and doesn’t point out real advantages that everyday users care about. People want to know the cool things they can do with a phone. Most people don’t care about 5 or 3 mega pixels on a phone, open or closed development, pics in the dark or not and the average user is not looking to customize, they want their phone already cool out of the box. So many people don’t even know what it means to have multi-tasking on their phone. This ad is a fail, misses the whole point of selling a phone to the mainstream user.
Negative, first the tech endorse, then the rest follow suit. That is how it works.
In your dreams.
Is that how Windows became the monopoly OS? Is that how Explorer became the top browser?
First the consumer buys. Then the tech criticises. That is how it works.
The one thing you’re forgetting is that this phone is DIRECTLY targeted at the “geeks” & not your average consumer. Motorola’s 2nd Android phone (CLIQ?) is the more consumer friendly version.
I think getting the tech-savvy group on board early is a great move on their part. I was going to switch to AT&T in January when my contract expires, but now I may just stay with Verizon.
“October 30th is a Friday. They may have just decided that they could get a better PR blitz if the announcement was made on a Wednesday rather than a Friday.”
That’s right on the money!!! I use to work for verizon they always seem to try to rush things out the door before their competitors.
So far their ads are working on me. Im dropping my iphone 3g and jumping ship as soon as its released. Motorola’s build quality has never been that superb which worries me a little bit and htc will take forever to get to verizon so for now ill have bite the bullet till there are better options. out there.
I’ve been waiting for a phone on VZW to come out to make me stay with them when my contract runs out next month. The Droid may be that phone…
Who really cares?? It’s interesting to watch this geek circle jerk over a phone.
My land line works great! Google can’t collect my data and sell it to the Russian mafia.
I hope all your Android data is sold and resold over and over again until you are driven crazy by little tiny ads.
Not to forget….
motorola releases earnings on the 29th,
Good for the stock!!!!
Will we soon be saying:
“There’s a Droid for that!”
Android yes but for how much??? I left Verizon for WOW Mobile. I was paying $179.00 per month because I needed unlimited Internet. WOW Mobile a new online store offers Android 1.6 on the MyTouch for only $79.95. It’s mobile voip and no data transfer cap! Checkout http://www.joinwowmobile.net it’s awesome IMHO!
720×480 video. wooot!!
http://www.moto...-Link-US-EN.alt
watch all the “Droid Does” commercials along with anti dorid videos from loyal iPhone users…
http://thetechn...-at-the-iphone/