Motorola Sholes/Droid Rumor Round Up: Is there no end to the wait?

Before I even start, looks like it’s time to start using the new and official name for this phone as suggested by this spy shot. But we have all gotten so used to the code name that it is sticking to us like a bad habit. So here we have a rumor roundup for the Motorola Sholes Droid, one of the most anticipated Android phones of the moment.

Currently, it is pretty evident from all the pictures and rumors that the Droid is heading for the Verizon Wireless (and maybe other places too). The real question is when does it get here. Logic would suggest that making a grand entry before the imminent holiday season is the best way to go. And indeed, it looks like that is exactly what will happen.

MobileCrunch has posted a conversation where an official from VZW reveals that the Sholes is coming soon. The conversation took place on twitter of all places! I mean I can see a non-descript meeting at an undisclosed public place and the usual “this conversation never took place” deal. But Twitter? Seriously?

Anyway, there have been a lot of rumors around this device and a quite a few spy shots have been posted on the Internet. What is interesting to note is that there is no consistent source for this, except for may be the Boy Genius Report blog. They have been putting up a lot of Sholes/Droid spy shots and screenshots lately. But other than them, you have such varied places as Motofan, Engadget Mobile, Mobile Crunch and there was also the Verizon Google announcement where the CEO’s of the two company held out unannounced phones and did not say a thing about them. Pretty much everyone caught that one.

About the specs, we know very little. From what the rumor mill has churned out, it seems like the phone will be powered by an ARM Cortex A8 chip and there are some who think it will be the Qualcomm Snapdragon. If it indeed is the Snapdragon, then we are likely to see a pretty snappy Android phone. The kind that we are yet to experience. This article from Anand of AnandTech explains why the Android phones have been sluggish and why it is about to change as of 1.6 (Donut).

All in all, it is quite likely that this Android phone will blow your socks off with its speed and performance. And that is not the only thing that is pulling people to this new offering from Motorola. This is going to be a ‘Google Experience’ phone. That means this phone is not going to have any bit of that MOTOBLUR UI that has hurt the CLIQ more than it has helped it. The Droid will instead have the pristine elegance that Google intended for the Android.

Looking at the screen shot from BGR that shows the official name of the phone, there seems to be scope for another speculation that is tied in with the device. It shows the firmware version as 2.0. That means it is already running Android 2.0 AKA Éclair, right? I would like to remind you folks that a giant foam Éclair was delivered to the Google lawn only recently.

So if the Droid is around the corner and it is running the Éclair release, and the said Éclair was already delivered to Google HQ, does that mean 2.0 for the rest of us isn’t very far away? We’ll see. Meanwhile, enjoy this video of the Droid booting, complete with a robot voice.

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