Motorola DROID 2

Available now, US only
10th August 2010

The original Motorola DROID has been a significant hit in the US, and it showed that Motorola could actually compete head-on with the Apple iPhone and other high-end rivals.

There have been quite a few variants of this design such as the supersized DROID X, and the GSM MILESTONE and the Korean MOTOROI and European XT720 variants, but now Motorola have revisited the original handset in the series with some useful improvements with the Motorola DROID 2, exclusive to the Verizon CDMA network in the US.

Cosmetically the DROID 2 and DROID look pretty similar at first, although the DROID 2 looks a little more sleek and the front buttons are in a different order. But slide open the QWERTY keyboard and you can see that this is one area where there has already been a significant improvement. The keyboard on the original DROID was not very good, so Motorola have made each key larger and more responsive, partly by removing the rather pointless navigation pad and replacing it with a set of cursor keys instead.

The DROID 2 runs Android 2.2 ("Froyo") out of the box which brings improved performance and full support for Adobe Flash and corporate email systems. Although Android 2.2 is very new, it builds on the popular Android 2.1 operating system which has thousands of applications available for it, and it probably needs no introduction.

One unusual feature with the DROID 2 is the optional "3G Mobile Hotspot" that allows you to turn your smartphone into a hotspot that you can connect up to five devices to, which makes it very easy to use a laptop via the DROID 2's 3G connection when travelling.

GPS is included of course, and you can either use Google Maps Navigation or a third party satellite navigation application. There's also an optional car mount and multimedia docking kit to go with the DROID 2.

It's quite a heavy phone at 169 grams, and measuring 116 x 61 x 14mm. The large 1400 mAh battery gives up to 9.5 hours talktime and 13 days standby time.

The DROID 2 is available to pre-order from Verizon Wireless this week, with delivery expected sometime in Q3. There will also be a special "R2D2" themed DROID 2 available online only during September.

The DROID 2 is a highly useful upgrade to the original with a highly competitive package including a very useful looking QWERTY keyboard which sets it aside from most of the competition. Because it's a CDMA device, the DROID 2 won't run on European networks.. but we bet that Motorola will announce the GSM version very soon.