From Droid To Hero, Android Phones Are Hot, Hot, Hot

Launch: Nov. 6
Carrier: Verizon
Price: $199 after rebates, two-year lock in






To date the fall's hottest, or at least most-hyped, Android phone, Motorola and Verizon's Droid, has a 3.7-inch touch screen, a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, 7 hours of talk time, an OMAP3430 processor, 512 MB of Flash memory, 256 MB RAM and a microSD slot expandable up to 16 GB. It is the first Android phone to use Android 2.0, Google's most up-to-date Android version.

Launched: Oct. 12
Carrier: Sprint
Price: $179 after rebates, two-year lock-in






Hero is Sprint's first Android smartphone and has beveled edges, an antifingerprint screen coating, a 3.2-inch HVGA touch-screen display with pinch-to-zoom capability, an embedded GPS, a digital compass, a gravity sensor, a 5-megapixel autofocus camera, and an expandable microSD memory slot. It's the first U.S. smartphone to use HTC Sense, allowing users to customize their home screens using different panels and widgets.

Launch: Nov. 6
Carrier: Verizon
Price: $99 after rebates, two-year lock in






Verizon this week announced a second Droid Android phone in its lineup, but it's in fact one we've already seen: a Verizon version of Sprint's HTC Hero. The Eris version goes on sale for $99 after rebates and a two-year lock-in and, like the HTC Hero, has a 3.2-inch touch screen, 528MHz Qualcomm processor, and runs Google Android 1.5 with HTC Sense. Form-factor-wise, the Eris is slightly smaller than the HTC Hero, but the two phones have many of the same feature sets.

Launched: Oct. 19
Carrier: T-Mobile
Price: $199 after rebates, two-year lock-in






Motorola's Cliq is the first phone to use Motorola's much-touted MotoBlur -- essentially an Android skin. It's a 3.1-inch touch screen with QWERTY slider keyboard on the side, and includes a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, 6 hours of battery talk time, a Qualcomm MSM7201A, 528MHz processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS enablement, and 256 MB and a microSD slot with expandable 32-GB capacity.

Launch: TBD
Carrier: Unconfirmed
Price: Unconfirmed






HTC's Tattoo, formerly the Click, launched in Europe in October on Vodafone, and is expected to reach U.S. shores within the next few months. It's currently being offered for free in European markets for qualified Vodafone contract subscribers, and is similar to the HTC Hero in that it includes the customizable HTC Sense interface. Tattoo also has a 2.8-inch touch-screen display, a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, 3.5mm stereo headset jack, expandable microSD memory slot, support for Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and a digital compass.

Launched: Nov. 1
Carrier: Sprint
Price: $179 after rebates and two-year lock-in








Samsung's Moment has an 800MHz processor, 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, optional trackpad and 3.2-megapixel camera, and also, thanks to Android, it includes built-in Google search and other Google features like Maps, Gmail and YouTube.

Launch: TBD
Carrier: T-Mobile
Price: Unconfirmed








The Behold II will be Samsung's first Android-based phone to hit the U.S. It includes Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with video capture, Wi-Fi capability and as much as 16 GB of expandable memory through a microSD slot. It also has a 3.2-inch AMOLED touch display and Samsung's TouchWiz UI and 3-D cube menu, plus built-in Google services like Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube. Samsung has not yet confirmed availability or pricing, but the phone will be on T-Mobile.

Launched: Oct. 2008
Carrier: T-Mobile
Price: $149.99 with rebates and two-year lock-in








It's lost a bit of its initial flash, seeing as it's a year old, but the T-Mobile G1 phone was the first publicly available mobile device based on Google Android to hit U.S. shores. It still packs a punch: 3.2-inch touch screen, horizontal sliding QWERTY keyboard, 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, 5.8 hours of battery talk time, Qualcomm MSM7210A, 528MHz processor, and enabled for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Android lovers will always remember their first.

Launched: July 8
Carrier: T-Mobile
Price: $149.99 with rebates and two-year lock-in






T-Mobile's second Google Android smartphone, the MyTouch 3G, offers a 3.2-inch touch screen, a 5-megapixel camera, 7.5 hours of battery talk time, a Qualcomm MSM7201a, 528MHz processor, and enablement for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. At the time of its launch, T-Mobile touted MyTouch 3G's applications, including apps like Sherpa, a learning engine that customizes user preferences.

Launch: early 2010
Carrier: Unconfirmed
Price: Unconfirmed






Sony Ericsson this past week confirmed the Xperia X10, its first Android phone and what, according to Sony Ericsson, is part of a family of forthcoming Android phones. Sony Ericsson hasn't provided details on availability, pricing or carriers, but the Xperia X10 runs on Android 1.6, sports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, is 3G- and Wi-Fi-compatible, has a touch screen, and includes an 8-megapixel camera.

Launch: TBA
Carrier: Unconfirmed; AT&T rumored
Price: Unconfirmed






Reports surfaced in early October that Dell would launch an Android-powered smartphone with AT&T in the U.S. by early 2010. Dell hasn't confirmed a thing, but various reports suggest the phone is a U.S. version of the Dell Mini i3 (pictured), which Dell released in China through China Mobile. It doesn't support Wi-Fi or 3G, but has a 3-megapixel camera, microSD slot, support for Bluetooh and 950mAh battery. Whenever you're ready to tell us anything, Dell, we're all ears.